


These are our Timelines

by Rehlia



Series: These Days Series [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Mobtale (Undertale), Alternate Universe - Swapfell, Alternate Universe - Underfell, Alternate Universe - Underswap, Awkward Conversations, Background Muffet/OC, Background Undyne/Alphys - Freeform, Dark, Dating HUD, F/F, F/M, First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, Interspecies Awkwardness, Kill or be killed, Lighthearted, Minor Alphys/Undyne (Undertale), Minor Character Death, Puns & Word Play, Sans Makes Puns, Skeleton Boyfriends, Slice of Life, Terrorism, Underfell AU, Violence, Worldbuilding, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2018-11-16 06:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11248521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehlia/pseuds/Rehlia
Summary: Frisk told you about it, how they and Chara reset over and over again to make the golden ending stick. How they tried to figure out how to keep the integration of monsters into human society peaceful. Some of these resets produced unusual results.A look into various AU versions of "These are our Days." Some parts may be difficult to understand without knowing the main story. Happy Anniversary, everyone!





	1. Underfell

**Author's Note:**

> On June 19th, 2016 I posted the first chapter of "These are our Days" and the year since then has been one of the craziest and coolest of my entire life. And the support I've received from everyone here is a huge reason for that! So as thanks, I decided to take a look at some AUs that some of you were interested in a while ago :) I hope you're having fun with these snippets! Mind the tags though, the first chapter delves into Underfell and gets really dark at some points!

You stare at the screen in complete disbelief, incapable of trusting your own eyes. This… this has to be the alcohol, right? You’re drunk and you’re seeing things. You’re not actually seeing a news report on monsters on one of the most well-known news stations in the country right now. They look like something straight out of your nightmares too, cementing your opinion that this must be some sort of fucked up dream. 

You shake your head and finish your second drink, flipping through the channels and seeing the same report everywhere. Talks about the emergence of monsters, about the impact this will have on the culture and the economy, about whether or not they’re dangerous, people pushing to fight them, people pushing to make peace with them - nobody seems to be able to reach a consensus about what to do right now. That’s probably not really surprising. If this were real… You sigh and rub your temples. So, you only had two drinks and that normally means that you shouldn’t be drunk enough yet to be seeing things. Technically, you shouldn’t be seeing things at all. 

But no matter how you look at it, vicious faces like those on your screen right now? 

They just can’t be real. You refuse to believe it.

You turn off the TV, suddenly no longer in the mood for an evening of booze and self-pity. Everything feels like shit, your life has broken down around you and seeing those nightmarish visions on the news hasn’t helped one bit with that. In fact it kind of made it worse. If those were real… which they can’t be, obviously. But if it was, that would mean that everything you know is wrong. That everything you might be secretly scared of is out there. You’re not comfortable with that thought. So it’s not real. It’s the alcohol, simple as that. And that means that you’ll stop drinking and just crash in your bed so you can wake up from all this bullshit. 

Hey, maybe you weren’t even fired. Maybe you didn’t fight with your mom, maybe Sam is still here. Maybe this can _all_ just be a nightmare. 

You’d like that a lot better than the alternative. 

With that thought in mind, you shuffle over to your bed, leaving the alcohol and ice cream where it is. You don’t even bother changing out of your clothes or brushing your teeth. 

It’s all a dream anyway, so it’s not really worth the effort. 

Right?

-

Waking up in wrinkled clothes with the bitter aftertaste of alcohol and decaying sugar in your mouth does nothing to improve your mood, not just because of how gross it feels, but also because it proves that it wasn't a dream after all. A quick look at the news confirms it. The social media accounts you follow are full of speculation about this, nobody seems to have much of an idea of what's going on apart from the fact that monsters did indeed emerge from Mount Ebott. They apparently have a child with them too, and social services are currently investigating who they are and where their family is. Apart from that, no new developments seem to have emerged overnight. 

As much as you would like to keep stalking the news for updates like so many others are doing, you really have to take care of your own situation for now. 

Over the next few days, you invest a lot of time in making sure that your CV and cover letter are up to date and match whatever company you're currently sending them to. That just makes it more frustrating when you receive one rejection after the other, faster than they would normally be sent out. Especially because you notice a sharp price hike whenever you go grocery shopping, too. Your little nest egg is dwindling a lot faster than it should; the insecurity in the wake of monsters appearing on that mountain and the discovery that they have gold seems to have brought the economy to a standstill in many ways and inflate it in others. 

Stupid monsters, you think uncharitably, watching the news again. 

There's new drama unfolding on Mount Ebott; the mother of that child has been found with a different family and has reluctantly agreed to take care of her kid - but instead of taking them away she's moved in with the monsters and is now living with them on the mountain. Which means that everyone is declaring her crazy and social services are trying to take the custody away from her. You can't help but wonder if they aren't right to do that, it sounds like a bad idea to keep a kid around creatures that nightmarish. Wouldn't that be bad for their development or something?

Although to be fair, as vicious as the monsters look, so far you haven't heard about them doing anything that would match their looks, despite the military that's keeping them on that mountain claiming they're highly aggressive and dangerous. Which, well. That's a bit hypocritical coming from those guys, isn't it?

You turn on the sound when the king of monsters comes into view, apparently meeting the president. There's an ungodly amount of security surrounding the two politicians, monsters on one side and humans on the other. The atmosphere is tense. 

“I feel that I have to stress that monsterkind does not seek to take revenge or restart a war against humanity,” Asgore is saying, his deep and bassy voice making your speakers crackle. “While our imprisonment under Mount Ebott had serious consequences, we are acting in the belief that violence only begets further violence.”

“It is a relief to hear that stated so clearly once more,” the president nods, sounding a lot friendlier than you expected him to. “It hope you understand that it is not in our plans to needlessly start a war either. Many humans are scared by your emergence and the recent developments in our economy and culture, but I believe that we will be able to reach a peaceful consensus and build a positive future together, with our species’ supporting each other to the best of our abilities.” 

The words sound nice, but they feel empty, you can't help but think as you watch Asgore reply with similarly pleasant but hollow phrases. His guards are having more trouble suppressing their sneers in the background. It's taken you a while, but the longer you kept watching the news over the past few days, the more you're beginning to think that the monsters are being treated pretty badly. You definitely understand all the caution surrounding them, they just look _dangerous_ and you were initially really scared of them as well. It makes sense to be careful in approaching them. But by now, it's clear that humans clearly outnumber them and that even though they have magic, apparently, they'd be no match in a war against humans. They just don't have the technology or numbers or knowledge. 

The news report ends with a call to donate to the monsters in order to help them out while they're trying to build themselves a life on the surface. The child that's with the monsters is allowed to speak directly into the camera, and for the first time you get a clear look at them. They look frighteningly small next to the monsters, almost fragile with that big yellow flower in their arms, but the only desperation you see on them seems to be out of worry for these creatures. 

Seeing a child, who you'd usually expect to be the most scared of monsters, act so brave is strangely humbling. 

“Please, it doesn't matter if the amount is small,” Frisk says. “Any little thing can help. The monsters need our help. They need _your_ help. They can't do this all by themselves. They need everything they can get!” 

“Yeah! And consider getting off your asses too and _do_ something, instead of just thinking it's not your problem!” The flower in their arm snaps. You didn't even notice it had a face. How can there be so many savage looking monsters and then one that resembles a buttercup? This is weird.

“Flowey!” Frisk chides, only to turn immediately towards the camera again. “I'm sorry. Everyone is very frustrated because the tents are so cold and wet, and we're not really making progress… he doesn't mean it.”

Tents? 

You frown. Okay, true, the news kept showing that the monsters still live on the mountain in some sort of refugee camp, but surely by now they would have started to build at least some houses? But now Frisk is saying everyone lives in tents… 

“Anyway. We'd really appreciate all the help we can get, no matter what. Please consider it,” Frisk finishes their plea. With that, the meeting between the monsters and the president seems to be wrapping up as well and shortly after, the station cuts to a panel of professors, politicians and other notable people who begin discussing that latest meeting, picking apart every statement to see what it all meant. 

You only listen to it with one ear, distracted by all the thoughts whirling around in your head. The monsters seem to be in a pretty bad situation… you turn to your laptop and start looking at all the information and pictures you can find. From the looks of it, it seems like there's a settlement at the foot of the mountain, but the owner wasn't willing to sell it and the military insisted on having the monsters stay on the mountain itself too. They don't seem to have the resources for building, nor access to architects or other specialists willing to help them. You do find several social media accounts for Frisk which their mother seems to manage, but the information there is disjointed and not as official looking as it should, and there's no website for the monsters at all. 

Wow, this is terrible. 

You wouldn’t presume that you’re good enough to actually publicly represent a new species, but honestly, you could do a lot better than _this_. 

...well. 

No, no no no, that’s a dumb idea, that’s not something you’re going to do. Even if the monsters are nicer than they look, this would be a highly dangerous job. These monsters are targeted from all sides and their situation is unstable and just really bad in general. 

Which actually just makes you want to help them more. Damn. 

Reluctantly, you pull up your application documents. You’re just going to have a look at them, that’s all, you’re just going to think about what you _could_ do for the monsters and see what your application would look like with that info edited in. That’s all. Nothing more. Absolutely nothing more.

Three hours later, you have the confirmation of your new employment in your inbox, along with instructions on how to get to Mount Ebott. 

-

Monsters are _big_ , and Undyne is scary as fuck. That’s your main impression as she leads you through the camp the monsters have set up on the mountain, after your military driver has dropped you with her and then left with one last, nasty look at you. After he spent the entirety of the drive here trying to convince you to turn back, you’re glad to be rid of him, but that doesn’t change the fact that you find Undyne extremely intimidating. You’re not sure what’s worse: her teeth, the fact that underneath her eyepatch half of her face seems to be missing, or that her armour looks as if she asked Sauron for fashion advice. Probably, a combination of all these factors. 

The camp itself looks grim; a couple of relief effort tents, a couple of tents from the military in camouflage colours and a large amount of ramshackle do-it-yourself solutions utilising everything from broken wood to rags to corrugated metal to cardboard in order to construct small shacks to give them shelter from the rain and the cold. They don’t look like they’re doing a terribly good job at that. Only a few monsters are sitting outside around fires, and all of them stare at you with distrust and anger in their eyes. You can’t really blame them for not liking humans much you suppose, but it still creeps you out. 

The tent where you meet Asgore is one of the larger ones and one of the few that don’t look completely worn down. The king of monsters is even bigger than Undyne and although his appearance is smoother, the ends up creeping you out even more than Undyne does. There’s something disingenuous about him. But at least the terms he offers you for your employment are more than fair - they’re really good, actually. Probably because of how risky it might end up being. You’re just standing up after having signed your contract when the air in front of you flickers and with a puff of air, a skull appears directly in front of you, gaping black eye sockets over a maw full of filed, vicious looking teeth. 

You scream out of shock and a fraction of a second later, you find yourself thrown onto the floor hard, a clawed and scaled hand pressing against your throat, a blue spear hovering inches above your left eye and a high-pitched whine sounding in the background. 

“Enough,” Asgore commands calmly, his deep and stern voice causing Undyne to release you. You can’t help but whimper a little; your back hurts and your heart is pumping like crazy from the initial shock and then nearly having a spear shoved through your eye. As Undyne moves away, you see a skeleton standing at your feet, dressed in a thick, black jacket and loose shorts. Above it hovers another skull, looking like a dragon with a flickering, crackling ball of energy gathering in its maw. 

You stare at it with wide eyes and don’t dare to move.

“I said _enough_ ,” Asgore growls, and the skeleton lowers its hand. The skull vanishes with that gesture. 

“heh. sorry, your majesty. got spooked,” the skeleton explains, sweat beading impossibly on its skull. It has a low, rough voice with a gravelly quality to it and an accent that you can’t for the life of you define. “jus’ reportin’ that the kid got back safe.” 

“Good. Then you can escort this human to the tent as well. You, follow him and he will show you your quarters,” Asgore tells you with a dismissive gesture of his hand. “Undyne, stay here, I wish to speak to you about the security measures for the new parts of the camp.” 

The skeleton ushers you out of the tent, and then immediately begins to grumble once you’re outside. 

“what the fuck do i look like, a taxi? stupid fucking…” his words become an indistinguishable grumbling noise as he leads you back into the confusing mess of shacks and tents. You quickly lose all sense of direction in this labyrinth even though you really try to get a good look at the shabby buildings in order to remember them. You flinch when the skeleton addresses you directly. 

“oi, keep up dollface! i ain’t got all day!”

“Sorry, I was just trying to remember the way,” you explain. And then, because you don’t appreciate being called dollface, you introduce yourself to him firmly but politely. The skeleton grin viciously at you.

“heh. sure, nice ta meetcha. the name’s sans, sans the skeleton. why don’t ya shake my hand, huh?”

You eye the offered appendage with a decent amount of apprehension, but you came here to help and you don’t want to be rude, so you quickly grab his hand to shake it. He grabs your hand hard and painful electric shock runs through you and you yelp, stumbling away from him as soon as he releases you, doubling over with loud, dirty laughter. 

“the old buzzer in the hand trick. always funny!” He cackles. 

“That hurt!” You snap at him, shaking your hand in the vain hope to get rid of the pain and the muscle cramps. 

“that’s what’s funny about it,” Sans insists, his grin growing even wider. You notice that one of his teeth is artificial, made from gold. If this is his idea of humour you’re not surprised he got it knocked out. He rolls his shoulders, takes a step forwards and is suddenly way too close in your personal bubble. When you try to step back, he snatches you up by the front of your shirt and holds you close. 

“sweetheart, ya shouldn’t look at people like that if ya ain’t ready for trouble,” he growls, his eyes narrowed while his grin is still stretched wide across his skull, a clearly threatening look.

“Let me go,” you demand, grabbing his hand to try and pry it off your shirt. You’re shaking and you’re really questioning your choice to come here, not for the first time. 

From behind you, you suddenly hear cheering and whooping. 

“Fuck yeah!”

“Show that human, Sans!” 

You feel panicked when Sans drags you away into a narrow opening between two shacks made of broken plastic panels and carboard, but with how someone is cheering for him to hurt you, you don’t dare to call for help. You have the uncomfortable feeling that that would only get you into more trouble. 

Sans pushes you against the wall once you’re deep in the shadows and out of sight, catching your hands and holding them so tight that you can’t move. You don’t really have enough space to kick him either and you’re really starting to get freaked out. What is he going to do to you?! What even is this place?! You shouldn’t have come here, you’re so dumb, you shouldn’t have done this - 

“chill, dollface, i ain’t gonna hurt ya,” Sans mumbles, glancing in the direction you came from before looking back at you. “listen. ya can’t do that. ya can’t look at people like they deserve a punch ‘round here ‘n expect not to get into trouble. those fucks back there woulda given you trouble if i hadn’t pulled ya in here.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?!” You whisper angrily, automatically matching his quiet voice. “I’m here to help you!”

Sans actually chuckles at that, a different sound from the mean-spirited laugh you heard before. 

“ain’t nobody gonna believe that without proof, sweetie,” he tells you. “bit hard to believe you humans after all the shit you pulled on us.”

You really want to argue further, but at the same time he’s kind of right and you don’t really want to get into trouble on your first day here. 

“Okay, fine. I’m sorry for looking at you like that,” you say. Sans, who was in the middle of checking the entrance to this little alleyway again, looks back at you like you’ve suddenly grown a second head and blinks. You have no idea what his problem is now. 

“What?” You ask defensively, wondering if apologies somehow count as a sign of aggression around here, too. Honestly, it’s no surprise the news reports about these guys were so negative. They’re not exactly doing a great job presenting themselves as friendly, no matter how peaceful they claim to be. 

“nothin’,” Sans grumbles, turning away from you. “think they’re gone now. c’mon.” 

You follow him out of the alley and wonder again what the hell you just got yourself into. 

-

Undyne might be terrifying, but you can’t help but think that in a strange way, it’s really nice of her to offer to train you like she trains the other human you’re sharing a tent with, a woman called Dolores. Knowing how to defend yourself seems to be a good idea considering that there have been several attempts at terrorist attacks on the Ebott camp in the past week alone. She can shout about how much of a wimp you are and how you’d never have survived in the Underground all she wants, you see the worried glances she keeps giving you and you also can’t help but notice that she even made the time to train you one on one instead of letting you embarrass yourself in front of your far more physically fit roommate. You’re secretly starting to suspect that she’s a bit of a softie underneath her hard exterior, because as fearsome as she looks and acts, you keep seeing her doing this kind of stuff, helping out kids or weak monsters or, well, you. It gives you a bit of hope that there might be more to the other monsters as well. So far, you didn’t really have much to work with in order to endear the monsters to the humans, so you’d appreciate some niceness underneath all that nastiness. 

Even though her niceness isn’t sounding or feeling all that nice. 

“Again! One more lap!” She shouts at you, while you try to keep up instead of falling over while wheezing like you want to. “Yes!! Like that! The ground is your enemy and your feet are kicking it!”

You can’t help the giggle that escapes you at that phrasing and you stumble, finally coming to a stop resting your hands on your knees. You’re breathing hard, Undyne really shows no mercy in training you. 

“Weak,” she says gruffly as she walks up next to you. “You barely managed two laps more than you did yesterday.”

“Does that mean I’m not ready for battle training yet?” You ask, not quite managing to keep the hope out of your voice. Undyne leans down until she’s at your eye level so you can properly appreciate the absolutely wicked grin she’s giving you. 

“No, it means you get to train with one of my most promising underlings,” she tells you, obviously enjoying the way your face falls because she starts laughing loudly while you just sigh miserably. 

Her most promising underling turns out to be nobody else but Papyrus, whom you’ve seen - and _heard_ \- only from afar until now. He’s Sans’ brother and, according to him, the coolest guy ever. You’re not sure you agree; everything you’ve heard him shout so far sounds as if he’s a terrible brother. Then again, he’s no better or worse than monsters in general, and you’re slowly figuring out that a lot of what the monsters are doing is posturing, trying to make themselves tough enough to avoid fighting completely. Even though in the Underground, they still fought a lot from what you’ve heard - many monsters tried to prevent fights in the first place out of fear. The long imprisonment had really made for a ruthless society. You know this, but it still catches you off-guard sometimes. So you’re not really sure what to expect from Papyrus now. You don’t think Undyne would endanger your life, but it’s hard to say what kind of a monster Papyrus is - a mean shell with a slightly less mean interior, or just mean period. 

“HAVE YOU FOUGHT BEFORE?” Papyrus wants to know. 

“Uhm, no.” 

He huffs, but unlike Undyne doesn’t take the opportunity to mock you further. Instead, he holds out his hand and twists it, and suddenly your surroundings become pitch black while a small, green heart emerges from your chest, hovering slightly apart from you. The green heart and Papyrus, now appearing completely black and white, are all you can see now. 

“Whoa,” you exclaim, taking in your changed surroundings. This is weird. Especially that heart. Why did it come out of you? “What’s that?”

“YOUR SOUL,” Papyrus says casually. 

“My _what_?!”

“FOCUS, HUMAN!” He snarls. “IT’S YOUR SOUL! THE CULMINATION OF YOUR BEING! IT’S WHAT YOU FIGHT WITH AGAINST MONSTERS.” 

“I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that,” you protest, not really liking the idea. 

“IT’S A FIGHT, IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE COMFORTABLE,” Papyrus insists, which, okay, you can’t really argue against that you suppose. “DEAL WITH MY EXPERTLY CONSTRUCTED BONE ATTACKS, IF YOU CAN!” 

A row of large, white bones erupt from the ground, all passing in front of you without you actually having to do anything to evade them. A second row of bones, this time blue, follows quickly after that, but while they pass through that little green heart - your soul? - without doing anything, they too don’t hit you. Were you supposed to move or anything? It feels kind of confusing now that you think about it, like you’re having a hard time figuring out where your limbs are. This is weird. In front of you, your soul turns from green to blue and falls to the ground. You look at it in surprise as you feel a great heaviness settle over you, as if there’s a bunch of hidden weights tugging at you. What the - ?

A new row of white bones shoot out at your heart, and this time they all hit, causing a blinding pain to radiate through your body, feeling like it’s coming from everywhere at once. You cry out at the feeling and stumble back, falling over with how heavy you feel. More bones batter your body and you soul, until you’re curled up in the fetal position desperately trying to protect the little heart and any vulnerable parts like your head and your stomach from the assault. 

What the hell!! This is training, why isn’t he going easy on you?!

“I SPARE YOU,” Papyrus suddenly says behind you. You merely whimper in response and need several moments before you feel that you can manage to look up at him. Your whole body feels weak and bruised. Papyrus looks down at you with a scowl. 

“WELL?” He prompts. “WILL YOU ACCEPT MY MERCY?”

“Y-yeah…?” You try. Without any further actions from you, your soul suddenly floats back into your body and the darkness around you vanishes. You’re still wondering what the fuck just happened when a cinnamon bun shaped like a bunny is shoved into your face. 

“EAT THIS,” Papyrus orders you. 

“What the hell was all of that?!” You ask, taking the bun without eating it yet. “What was all that darkness and… was that really my soul?! Why didn’t you stop hurting me?!”

“Why the fuck would he stop?” Undyne pipes up, having stepped up next to Papyrus, looking down at you with a frown. “Do you think in a real fight your opponent would just stop attacking you because they hurt you? You gotta learn how to work through the pain!” 

“EAT,” Papyrus insists before you can begin to argue about how you can’t be expected to just be thrown into a situation like that and know what to do. Monsters are so frustrating sometimes! You angrily take a bite out of the bun Papyrus has given you and start chewing. You don’t really feel hungry, but you get the feeling that you won’t get anywhere with these two right now until you’ve eaten this stupid cinnamon bun. Thankfully, Undyne and Papyrus use that moment to start explaining their magical fighting system to you, and you calm down slightly. 

Right until you notice something. 

“Uhm. Guys?” 

“WHAT!” Papyrus growls, obviously not appreciating the interruption when he was just about to explain how granting mercy works to you. 

“I could have sworn I had bruises just now,” you begin carefully, flexing your hand and marvelling at the fact that you can move without your body hurting. 

“YES, AND?!” 

“Where are they?”

“DON’T ASK STUPID QUESTIONS! YOU ATE THAT FOOD SO OF COURSE THEY’RE GONE!” 

“You can _heal_ people with _magic food_?!” You ask incredulously. 

“Of course we can?” Undyne doesn’t seem to understand what the big deal is while you stare at them with utter disbelief. You had no idea. 

“I need you to tell me more about that immediately,” you insist, getting up from your position on the ground. 

“Your training - “

“No, Undyne, like I need this for my job, okay?!” You dare to interrupt her, needing her to understand how important this is. “This is huge! It could help you a lot! Why didn’t anyone tell me this? This could change everything!”

Undyne just shrugs. “It’s just food? You humans heal gross shit and nasty wounds all the time.” 

“But not like that! Not with magic and not so quickly!” 

It looks like it’s beginning to dawn on the two monsters in front of you that you’re not acting this way for nothing. You give them a wide grin, suddenly feeling really inspired. You knew there had to be something good about the monsters that you could use for a campaign! 

“Man, this is great! Thanks for giving me this, Papyrus!” You tell him. He looks at you in a completely nonplussed way and barely manages to stutter out a half-assed insult before you’re interrogating Undyne for more info on monster healing. 

Several days later, the world reels from your revelation, and the monsters look at you with a newfound kind of respect. 

\- 

The light on your desk flickers, making your headache worse. Still, you pray that it won’t give out on you again. You don’t want to spend another night working in the dark, with nothing but the light of your laptop screen illuminating the room. You need to get this finished, the most recent attack on the monster settlement was really not good for morale and the monsters need good PR to offset that, and you’re the one who has to make it happen but it’s late and you’re tired and your head hurts - 

“knock knock,” you hear a voice you recognise from the entrance of your tent. 

“Who’s there,” you reply tiredly, still feeling a small smile growing on your face. Sans’ jokes might be terrible, and he might be a little shithead most of the time, but there isn’t much to laugh about here in the Ebott camp, so you appreciate him telling them anyway. 

“dover.”

“Dover who?”

“ben dover and i’ll give ya a big, fat surprise,” Sans says, immediately erupting into a raunchy, cackling laughter while you groan. 

“Gross,” you comment, “and anyway, what would you even surprise me with? You’re a skeleton!”

“well wouldn’t you wanna know,” he leers as he enters the tent, still chuckling hoarsely. 

“Not really,” you retort with a quick look back at him, before you concentrate back on your screen. While imagining him doing anything sexual really isn’t doing it for you, you can’t help but wonder now. He is a skeleton, but he seems to be implying that he… so how…? From the way he snickers behind you, you get the uncomfortable feeling that he knows what you’re thinking about. Shit. Deny everything immediately! Or better yet, distract him. 

“So, was there anything you wanted?” You ask him casually. 

“yeah, convince ya to take a break,” he says equally casually. 

“Sans, no,” you sigh, pinching your nose bridge between two fingers. He keeps doing this, interrupting you whenever you’ve been at it for a while and trying to distract you from your work, or trying to get you to stop working completely for a while. He’s completely obnoxious about it. Normally you’d say you appreciate the attempt to make sure that you’re not overworking yourself, but honestly you’re just way too busy right now. 

You’ve been way too busy for the past few weeks because the situation between humans and monsters just grows more and more complex and no matter how much you try teaching monsters more about your job, they’re just not ready to handle it yet. It would be hilarious how bad they are at creating good PR and managing the organisational work that goes into it, if it didn’t mean you have to manage a workload that should be handled by a whole team all by yourself. The social media accounts are only the start; you’ve also taken care of creating a website and are maintaining it, there’s interviews, livestreams, regular Q&As, correspondence with the human media… that one monster entertainer, Mettaton, is doing something similar to you, but he’s just as busy as you are making sure that humans are gaining a better reputation among monsters. And then with the most recent attacks, well, how are you supposed to - 

“Sans, please put me down,” you groan when you suddenly start floating away from your desk. Man, you wish Dolores was here, she’s much better shutting this guy up. But she’s over at Asgore’s tent doing some legal stuff that you have no clue about and you have no idea when she’s going to be back. 

“nope. not until you understand the gravity of the situation,” he laughs. 

“Sans I mean it, I don’t have time for this right now,” you insist, trying not to grin at the bad pun. 

“not tryin’ to make light of your situation, but ya always say that,” Sans grins, his single gold tooth gleaming in the flickering light of your desk lamp. 

“It’s always true,” you sigh, already accepting that you lost this one. You’ve experienced this often enough, he won’t let you down for a while yet. “So what now?”

“now you’re just gonna hang out with me for a bit,” he says with an exaggerated wink, finally causing you to crack and actually laugh. He seems inordinately pleased with himself at that. 

“Fine, if you insist…” You’re not actually fighting him as hard as you should. Floating does actually feel very nice. It’s amazing to be weightless and get to hang in the air without gravity holding you down. The first time he did this, you actually started crying because you were so overwhelmed and happy. It’s pretty embarrassing, but man, monster magic. It’s just so cool. Sans knows exactly how much you love this and dirty cheater that he is, he uses this tactic shamelessly whenever he wants you to take a break. 

“ya can help me do some science if ya wanna work that badly,” he tells you, rocking back and forth on his sneakers while he watches you spin slowly in the air. 

“I’m not doing your paperwork for you,” you say, narrowing your eyes at him, although you suspect that the effect of that is lessened by the fact that you have to grab the hem of your shirt to prevent it from riding up as you spin lazily forwards. 

“nah. not boring stuff like that. just wanna know, can ya feel my magic when i do this?” 

“Uh…” You blink while you listen inside yourself for the magnetic sensation that you’ve come to associate with magic. You keep feeling it on Undyne’s spears and Papyrus’ bones whenever you train with them, but you never thought to try and detect it on your soul whenever magic is used on it. You do think you can detect it though, a faint pulsing tingle at the very edge of your perception. “Yeah, kind of? I think that’s your magic at least, it feels kind of similar to my pulse.” 

“your… what?”

“My pulse,” you repeat, looking at him with surprise when you hear the confusion in his voice. He merely raises his brow bones in return, a quiet prompt for you to elaborate. Does he really not know what a pulse is? You thought he was a scientist who studied humans and everything. “Like, my heartbeat? Blood being pumped through my body and all that?” 

“ya feel that?”

“Of course?” 

Sans is wearing the most wtf-ish expression you’ve ever seen on a monster and you can’t help but laugh out loud upon seeing it. You immediately bite down on your lip, monsters _hate_ to be laughed at and Sans is no exception, but shit, that looked hilarious!

“Do you want to feel it too?” You ask him quickly, hoping that you can maybe distract him from the laugh so he won’t get all huffy and insulted and leave. ...even though you should want him to leave. 

Whatever. 

“i can?” 

“Sure. Just put your fingers here,” you instruct him. You hold out your arm and show him where and how to feel for your pulse before withdrawing your own hand and allowing him to try it instead. 

The tips of his finger bones are filed into vicious claws, but the way he feels for your pulse is gentle and careful, and he doesn’t even so much as scratch you even when he flinches as soon as your heartbeat becomes noticeable under the pressure of his fingers. He looks up at you with the lights in his eye sockets wider than you’ve ever seen them, his expression oddly defenseless and open, surprised and full of wonder and almost soft. 

Something about that suddenly feels way too intimate for you. You didn’t even realise how close Sans stepped to you, but he’s close enough that you can see his skull in full detail, for the first time noticing a muted, subtle shimmer of colour where the light hits it just right, like a pearl catching the light of a candle. It’s beautiful, more beautiful than you thought something about Sans could be.

His fingers shift on your arm, still oh so careful not to hurt you, and were it not for the pressure of him seeking your pulse, this could almost be a caress.

“Sans?” You ask quietly, when he keeps staring at you in silence. 

Your voice breaks whatever trance he’s under and he yanks his hand back abruptly, clutching it to his chest. Where before he was staring at you, he suddenly seems incapable of meeting your eyes. 

“yeah,” he mumbles, stumbling backwards towards the entrance of the tent. 

“Hey - “ 

He flicks his hand at you and you return to the ground gracelessly, yelping when you stumble as your feet impact the ground. By the time you’ve sorted yourself out enough to stand up again, Sans is gone. 

What the fuck. 

Did that really just happen? It seems impossible. This is _Sans_ after all, Sans of the crude jokes and nasty pranks and obnoxious, annoying, interrupting meddling. Sans who smells like mustard and his musty old jacked and this weird kind of boney musk. Sans who… 

Who keeps making you laugh when nothing else in this place can, who makes sure you take breaks and who touches you more carefully than any other monster ever has - 

No. 

Just no. 

He’s a skeleton. 

No. 

-

The explosion catches you completely off guard. One moment you’re walking through the winding back alleys that form the western side of the Ebott camp, thinking about which way to go to make your walk back to your tent as short as possible. And then the next moment, everything is a cacophony of a bursting, screaming sound accompanying blinding light and shaking ground and you fall over, half stumbling and half scrambling on the ground to seek shelter despite rationally knowing that nothing here is sturdy enough to withstand an explosion of this scale. 

Your ears are ringing and you’re incapable of orienting yourself for a moment. Then the sound returns and you hear screams and the crackle of fire. 

It’s… 

Oh god, no. Please, no, no, no no _no_ \- 

You stand up and start running, hoping that it isn’t true. That you’re remembering the layout of the camp wrong, that it’s not Asgore’s tent where he and the half-mad former queen, but even more importantly Frisk and Dolores and the monsters you’d say are your friends are working most of the time. That it’s not… 

You come to a stop at the edge of what looks like a crater. The grass is burnt and in places still burning, the ground is littered with torn cloth and charred, splintered wood, smoke and dust suffuse the air. 

Dust. 

You start coughing and desperately press hour hand over your mouth and your nose, but you know you already got some of it into your lungs. It’s gross but you ignore the horror of it for now, this is bad, you need to find your friends! They can’t have died, they just can’t. You refuse to believe it. Not Undyne, not Papyrus, not Sans, god, Sans, things have been so awkward with him, you didn’t even get the chance to patch things up, what if he’s dead? He can’t be dead. He can’t be! 

You heart is pounding frantically in your chest as you step forwards, eyes burning in the filthy air, trying to make out anything among the debris. You need to find them… 

It’s not one of your friends you find first. 

It’s a cat monster that you’ve seen sell junk food here and there, his orange fur filthy and dusty. He looks up at you with pain and fear evident in his eyes and hisses at you viciously, trying to swipe at you with his claws. 

Half of his arm is missing. 

You stare at him in utter horror when you notice that it’s spreading, that the stump that’s left of his arm is getting smaller and smaller as it slowly turns into dust. 

“No, wait, hey, hold on!” You yelp, dropping to your knees next to him. He hisses at you again, but while he does manage to swipe at you this time, his movement is so weak that his claws don’t even penetrate your skin. You ignore it completely and take his paw in your hands. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. Hold on, okay? You have to hold on.”

The monster stares up at you uncomprehending, looking lost and confused at your words. You don’t even know what you’re doing yourself. You just know that it would feel wrong to leave him alone here, or to just watch while he dissolves into dust. 

“It’s going to be okay,” you tell him frantically, “there’s, there’s going to be healers soon, so just hold on, okay? They’ll help you. It’s going to be fine - “

You see the exact moment when he understands that he’s going to die, fear and pain and exhaustion on a face that you suddenly realise looks young, far too young, he looks like he’s in his late teenage years at best and he’s just. He’s dying. 

He breathes out a last, stuttering breath and suddenly explodes into a cloud of dust, the oily, grainy texture of which clings to your fingers and your clothes. You stare at your empty hands not wanting to believe what just happened. It can’t be true. This can’t be happening. 

A sob wracks you and you start coughing again when that only makes you breathe in more of that dust and suddenly you feel sick. 

Your stomach violently empties itself before you can do anything to stop it. Your throat hurts, from throwing up and from crying and from all that dust in the air, you don’t want to be here, you don’t want this to be real, you want to see your friends and go _home_ except you don’t even know where that is anymore because it’s not really here in this camp of horror but you don’t have a flat to return to anymore either. You’re only starting to cry even harder at that realisation. You push yourself up and stumble through the wreckage of the latest attack the monsters have had to endure, seeing the dust and the destruction and feeling a confusing mixture of longing for your former safe human home and of burning anger that your own people would do something like this. 

It’s difficult to see through the tears, but when you spot Papyrus a few paces away, it’s unmistakeable. 

“P-pap…” you choke out, not getting any further than the first syllable of his name before your voice gives out. 

“HUMAN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” He snaps at you, his voice full of rage and horrified worry. 

“I was so scared you’re all dead,” you sob, and then you surprise yourself by hugging him. 

“H-HUMAN, CEASE THIS AT ONCE!” Papyrus shrieks, and you stumble back. What were you thinking? Just because he’s shown you some kindness that doesn’t mean he thinks of you as a friend like you do, or that he’d comfort you right now, that’s dumb. You’re dumb. Everything is dumb.

When did you start shaking anyway? 

“I AM NOT DEAD, NOR IS ANYONE ELSE YOU KNOW!” Papyrus says roughly, grabbing you by the shoulders and steering you away from the wreckage. His grip hurts, but at least he’s preventing you from falling over. “FRISK, UNDYNE, SANS AND I WERE ACCOMPANYING ASGORE TO A SURVEY OF THE NEW GUARD RECRUITS WHILE DOLORES AND ALPHYS WERE MEETING THE FORMER QUEEN.”

“You’re all okay?” You ask weakly, almost not daring to believe it. 

“YES. THE KING ORDERED ME AND MY BROTHER HERE TO CHECK FOR YOU AND FOR OTHER SURVIVORS,” Papyrus explains, only to shove you away from him as soon as you’re clear of the site of the explosion. You feel like you could faint when you see Sans standing there, looking just as angry and worried as Papyrus sounds. “SANS! BRING HER BACK TO HER TENT AND THEN COME BACK TO HELP ME AT ONCE!” 

“still not a fuckin’ taxi,” Sans mumbles while Papyrus stomps away, back into that nightmare of smoke and dust and destruction. You start laughing and can’t stop when you hear that. You want to. You really want to, your throat still hurts too much to be laughing right now, but it just keeps coming. 

The world flickers around you and the noise and the smell of fire vanishes in an instant. Your laughter dies down as the slightly more comforting smell of your tent makes it into your noise, accompanied by mustard and musk. 

Sans is rubbing his jacket sleeve over your face, wiping away your tears. 

You can’t help but think of how relieved you are that he’s not dead and suddenly want nothing more than to bury your face in that dumb jacket he always wears, to be as close to him as you can while simultaneously feeling embarrassed because you know he must be able to see that. How messed up is it anyways, that you survive a disaster like that and your first instinct is to go and look for skeleton cuddles?! To your surprise though, he actually pulls you closer until your head is resting against his shoulder, keeping one hand on you back to steady you.

He’s warm and hard. 

He feels safe. 

You allow yourself to lean against him for just one moment. A single moment where you push away what just happened and concentrate on nothing but the feeling of Sans being here, alive, holding you. It’s over much too fast but you know that you shouldn’t be keeping him, not when his brother might need him to bring other survivors away. He shouldn’t be lingering here at all. 

When you look up to tell him that you’re okay now, that he can go, you find his face less than an inch away from yours. 

Sans leans in until the hard edge of his nasal bone touches the soft flesh of your nostrils, and you feel his breath on your lips as he moves against you in what you belatedly realise is a nuzzle. His hand on your back is suddenly pressing you closer, straining against you and trembling. It’s a mixture of rough and gentle that you don’t even remotely know how to handle right now, but the rush it sends through you blindsides you completely and it kind of makes you want to throw your arms around him and do other things and _you refuse to think about that right now what the fuck_. This is just the shock talking again, right? Just that.

“don’t fucking go near an explosion ever again,” Sans growls, staring into your eyes with an intensity that’s both frightening and exciting. Shit. No. Scrap that last part. “you hear me?”

“Yeah,” you force yourself to say. 

“good,” Sans tells you, his voice still growling more than anything else. “stay here. i’ll be back.”

He vanishes with a puff of displaced air, leaving you to stumble in the sudden absence of his support. You give in and simply allow yourself to sink to the floor, pulling your head between your knees and holding your hands over your eyes. 

This is too much. You don’t know how to deal with this. Coming here you expected things to be bad, but not like this. You feel like a fucking idiot for coming here, thinking you could deal with this. And now Sans - 

You have no idea what to do about Sans either. You know what’s happening between you two, but you don’t know how to handle it. 

How does one handle developing a crush on a vicious looking skeleton monster? 

You have no idea. At least he doesn’t seem to be opposed to the idea either. Or was that just his own reaction to the aftermath of the explosion? Shock? No, there was that moment when you were floating, so you can assume that you’re at least not alone with your weird cross-species feelings. At least there’s that. Not that it’s going to do you any good in the long run. Fuck, the majority of people already want the monsters dead and you out of here or dead too. You can’t like him like that, if that gets discovered it’s just going to make everything worse. 

You’ve wished for things to be different before, but you never felt this desperate about it before, or as hopeless. 

You sit on that floor for hours thinking this over and over until you hear a soft pop and a heavy, hard arm settles around you, drawing you into a sideways hug that you immediately push into, throwing every caution you just told yourself into the wind. Judging from the way how tightly he holds you against him, Sans really does seem to feel similar. 

When he pulls you up and nuzzles you again you come to understand two things. One, the intense feelings this seemingly simple action causes in you were definitely not just because of the shock. And two, no matter what you absolutely don’t want to stop whatever the fuck is developing between you, no matter how weird it is and how difficult it might be in the future. 

You may not have known him for very long, but for some reason you feel that it’s worth it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for now for Underfell :) Next I want to do Underswap! Stay tuned for that~


	2. Underswap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Underswap! I wanted to publish both this and the last chapter on the same day originally, but I just couldn't manage to finish them in time. Oh well.  
> About this chapter, I headcanon a lot of things about the Underswap verse differently than the majority of the fandom views them, so if anything is confusing for you, please refer to [this post](https://rehlia.tumblr.com/post/159123497160/underswap-headcanons) about my Underswap headcanons! 
> 
> Enjoy!

Most monsters are pretty big, which is why you’re glad that the captain of the royal guard is actually much closer to your own height, albeit wider and far more muscular than you are. Her name is Alphys and she looks like some sort of yellow dinosaur in armour. 

“Lawyer, huh?” She asks you, her obviously deliberately cultivated rough tone not masking the fact that her voice is rather squeaky and not as dangerous sounding as she'd probably like.

“Yeah, mostly for immigration law,” you clarify. A lot of people who meet you tend to think that just because you studied law you can give them legal advice on all sorts of topics, which obviously isn't the case. In the past, you've found that pointing out your specialisation early in the conversation can help with that. You're not sure if monsters would make the same assumptions about lawyers as a human would, but it can't hurt. 

“Is it true that you fight with your contract papers? And yell OBJECTION when someone's wrong?!” Alphys looks so excited about the idea that you feel bad dashing her dreams. 

“No, that's not really what it's like,” you tell her with an apologetic smile. “You played Ace Attorney, right?”

“Yeah! I thought, hey, I'm the captain of the royal guard! I gotta know all about humans, right?! So I need to know about their laws too!” Her wild grin grows a bit smaller as she looks back to you thoughtfully. “What's it like then?”

“It's mostly a lot of normal paperwork,” you explain, positively surprised that she's able to cast her own preconceptions aside so quickly. Not everyone who played those games is capable of doing that. “It's also speak to a lot of people and look up details in legal reference books, that kind of thing.”

“Bah, that's so boring I comparison,” Alphys blurts out, only to look at you with barely concealed embarrassment immediately afterwards. “Uh, no offence.”

“None taken,” you giggle. You know that a legal job isn't for everyone and someone as boisterous and active as this woman must obviously find it tedious, so you're not surprised at her statement. 

“Well I'm glad!” Alphys immediately shouts, clapping a hand on your shoulder so hard that you nearly fall over. She can't hold her laughter in when she catches you and maneuvers you back into an upright position while you rub your shoulder with a grimace. That really hurt, even if she didn't mean it. 

By now, you've arrived at a clearing where a large piece of cloth has been spanned between several trees, creating a large, open tent that's watched by several bunny monster guards. In the middle, the Queen of all monsters sits at a massive table, carefully reading through a stack of documents. She looks up when Alphys approaches her with a more or less delicate cough, announcing your presence and introducing her. 

You can't help but feel incredibly intimidated by the Queen and it takes every bit of self-control you have not to fidget under her eyes. 

She practically oozes regal grace, refined elegance, motherly wisdom and a steely strength all at once. This is truly the leader of her people, the woman who single-handedly took the steps to free her people from a thousand year long imprisonment. 

There suddenly had been strange rumours for several days, people claiming to have been assaulted only to be saved by a white avenger, the devil himself in the shape of a monstrous goat taking the criminals personally to hell. Shortly afterwards, monsters appeared on Mount Ebott and the Queen of monsters had announced herself as the cause of those rumours. By taking the soul of a single human who had fallen into the Underground, she had been able to leave by herself and collect the other six souls necessary to break the barrier. Out of respect for human life, she had only attacked humans who were about to commit hideous crimes of murder or rape. After breaking the barrier, she had even returned the soul of the first, innocent human that she had used to escape in the first place, a young child who had miraculously survived the ordeal. This, she claimed, was proof that monsters were not out for revenge, but that they want to integrate into human society peacefully. 

Still. 

What a woman. 

“Greetings,” Queen Toriel says kindly, “My name is Toriel, caretaker of all monsters. But I am sure you must know this already. Please. Have a seat.”

One of her big, elegantly groomed paws points at the chair opposite her and you sit down, noting that the furniture is just a bit too big for you to sit normally. The fact that several pillows have been piled on it to help elevate you to her level helps only marginally. 

“Thank you,” you tell her anyway, appreciating the polite gesture for what it is. Toriel nods at you and immediately begins to discuss the terms of your employment with you. She has a contract already drafted by her monster legal team, but openly asks for your input to make sure it holds up under human laws as well and she also tells you that if you should not like any of the terms, she is willing to alter them for you too within reason. You have no reason to complain though, her terms are more than fair. After making sure the contract is okay for both humans and monsters, she immediately requests you to help her out while she negotiates the purchase of a property at the foot of the mountain with its owner. She thankfully understands that you won't be able to gives the same kind of advice someone in property law could, but she correctly points out that you likely still know more about human property law than any monster, so you agree. It takes a couple of hours, but eventually the guy who owns the property is satisfied with the Queen's offer and signs it over. 

You've barely been here for half a day and you already feel incredibly productive; it has you in a good mood. The human has already left and Toriel tells you to get ready for an announcement she wants to make. The sooner the monsters know about the purchase, the sooner everyone can begin the preparations to move into their newly bought town. When you stand up and slide down from your stack of chair pillows though, you almost run into a short, stocky skeleton who suddenly appears in front of you with a soft popping sound. You flinch at the sudden apparition, but it immediately reaches out to catch you before you can accidentally stumble over your own feet. 

“WOWZA! Careful there, human, don't want to get hurt on your first day here!” The skeleton has a deep, beautiful baritone voice and a manner of speaking that reminds of of the heroes in old fashioned movies. The outfit it's wearing matches that impression: black shorts and a white shirt with what looks like a black full body suit underneath that covers the bones that would be exposed otherwise, sturdy blue boots and a blue bandanna, pauldrons sewn onto the shoulders of the shirt. “Would feel like a numbskull if I did that.” 

You stare at this monster in absolute wonder as it winks at you, marvelling at the fact that an eye socket can wink. How does _that_ work? You hear a quiet snicker from behind you. 

“Anyway, sorry for making you jump out of your skin. Hope you won't end up looking like me now,” the skeleton grins. You start laughing when you recognise the joke, but that's nothing in comparison to the other reaction.

Behind you, Toriel, Queen of all monsters and exemplary in her dignified demeanour, snorts loudly and breaks down into a loud fit of laughter. It's so honest and genuine that it just sets you off more, and even the guards surrounding you are grinning by now.

The skeleton looks extremely proud and happy watching the both of you slowly getting it together again. 

“You're okay, right human?” 

“Oh Sans, I am sure she will accept your apology, since it was so humerus,” the Queen says with a light giggle. Sans chuckles in return and smiles at you. You take the opportunity and introduce yourself, finding out that being a skeleton with no muscles doesn't prevent this monster from having a _very_ firm handshake. Wow. 

“Now, was there something I could help you with?” Toriel asks when you and Sans have finished your introductions. 

“Yes, your majesty!” Sans says enthusiastically, with a forceful voice and a salute. “I came to report that Asgore asked to speak with you about the living arrangements!”

“Please, I have already told you there is no need to be so formal,” Toriel chides gently. “As for the housing matter, we have already secured a solution just now. I was about to make the announcement as you appeared.”

“Oh, hey great! Then I get to tell him good news!”

“You do indeed,” Toriel chuckles. “Thank you, my friend.”

With another salute, Sans pops out of existence again, leaving you and Toriel with nothing but the company of the other guards. 

“Please excuse his demeanour,” Toriel says with a warm smile. “He has only recently been officially accepted into my guard, and it was his lifelong dream. He is very enthusiastic as a result.”

“It's fine,” you assure her, actually not having minded Sans’ energy at all in spite of his sudden appearance. He seemed like a fun guy to be around with his optimism and the way he used humour to lighten up the situation. “He was nice.”

Toriel seems pleased by your statement about Sans, and leads you away from the canopy of her short-term tent. 

Her speech that you helped secure the monsters a more permanent home is met by resounding cheers. 

-

There's really no way around it: Papyrus is weird. He may, in fact, be the single most awkward person among humans and monsters that you've ever met. Like, okay, everyone puts their foot into their mouths every now and then, some people more and some less. It happens to everyone at some point and you're honestly no stranger to awkwardness yourself given that despite the fact that you're trying, you're not always the most social person around. 

And then there's this guy. 

You _suppose_ him saying that he wants to meet death makes sense given that he's a skeleton, but claiming that skeletons are cuddly? Or that story about putting lime wedges into his eye sockets? And that's not counting his uneasy mumbling because he seems incapable of separating his teeth when he speaks. Sans can say that he has the coolest brother in the world all he wants, there's just no way around the fact that Papyrus is arguably almost worse than Undyne when it comes to social awkwardness, and that really counts for something considering that Undyne is self conscious about _everything_ starting from her eyepatch and ending with her all-consuming love for mecha and magical girl anime. At least with her there's always a ready conversational topic to fall back on. 

It's not that you mind him really, but you've been sitting across him in silence for a whole three hours now and there's no small talk, no work related chit-chat, nothing. Just you going through your paperwork, inputting data points into an excel sheet and him quietly tapping away on his own laptop. You envy Dolores for getting to film a promotional video with Toriel, Sans, and Chara today. Asgore is handling some of his own duties as a very reluctant politician, but they're minor enough that he doesn't need your help. 

It would probably be better if your work wasn't so boring and frustrating right now. If you had something interesting to do you could just focus and ignore the awkwardness, but your thoughts keep drifting off and you're really tempted to procrastinate. A quiet, frustrated huff escapes you as you look between your papers and the excel sheet for the nth time. This just isn't working out how you want it to. 

“something wrong?” Papyrus asks you quietly, shifting uneasily in his seat. 

You’re so surprised by the fact that he speaks up that you flinch and almost drop your pen, which only makes him squirm harder. 

“uh. sorry…” 

“It’s okay,” you hurry to say before he can get really awkward about it. “I just hate this kind of work, it doesn’t work out the way I want it to.”

“what… are you doing?” He asks hesitantly, but with notable curiosity. 

“I’m trying to organise the case files in a way that keeps them easier for me to access so I don’t always have to sort through endless paper stacks in order to find whichever issue Toriel currently needs,” you sigh. “But there’s so much to do and everything is so interconnected that I just can’t seem to find a system that makes sense. I keep shifting everything around and it just ends up more and more confusing no matter what! I can’t keep working like this, I’ll drown in paper if I don’t figure this out…”

Like Dolores, you think but don’t say. You like her, but that woman has such a chaotic work style that it’s a relief that her work mostly happens on screens, like on her laptop and her cellphone. Her desk is already a complete trash pile of junk food, sticky notes and random items that she seemingly forgot there. You don’t even want to imagine what the desks in the house would look like if she had your job for example. Probably horrible. 

“...can i see?” Papyrus asks you after a moment of silence, interrupting your musing about how messy your roommate is. 

“Sure, why not,” you shrug, turning your laptop towards him. “I have a backup copy so knock yourself out.”

Papyrus pulls your laptop closer carefully and stares at the screen for a while. You watch him and wonder what he's thinking, his face neutral and calm. With less surface to move around on his face and no expressive lights in his eyes to provide clues, you find Papyrus’ face a lot harder to read than Sans’. Papyrus looks much more like a regular skeleton and when he concentrates and his face stills that resemblance is particularly noticeable. Not like Sans, whose lively, sunny disposition sometimes makes it hard to remember that he is in fact a skeleton. 

Suddenly, movement returns to Papyrus’ body as he starts clicking and tapping away on your laptop. You blink in surprise, but you don't have to keep your curiosity in check for long because it only takes five minutes and then he slides the laptop back over to you. 

“how’s this?” He asks, his entire demeanour now seeming a lot more relaxed. He looks happier somehow. 

You take a look at the excel sheet and the further you read, the more your mouth falls open. This… this is brilliant. It's simple. Elegant. Logical. The different subsections go together perfectly and make cross-referencing so easy, while still being perfectly self-contained. 

“Oh my god,” you breathe out, still staring at the miracle that is this system.

“do you like it?” Papyrus asks, and despite him really trying he can’t keep the desperate need for approval out of his voice, which is more emotion than you usually get from him. 

“It’s _perfect_ ,” you assure him, genuinely meaning it. 

“What’s perfect?” Sans asks, entering the room through the glass door to the garden. For some reason, he and Alphys always use the back door. 

“Papyrus made a file organising system for me!” You explain enthusiastically. “I couldn’t get it to work, but he did it in minutes… this is saving me so much work, I have no idea how he did it so fast!”

“was just like a puzzle,” Papyrus mumbles, drawing his shoulders up but looking obviously pleased at your praise. And so does Sans, the lights in his eyes widening and sparkling until they look like stars. 

“Yeah, my bro is really good at this kind of stuff! Puzzles and maths and machines and all that,” he brags, causing Papyrus to flush a little and draw his shoulders up even further. But he still looks happy, soaking up the attention like a sponge while Sans continues to gush. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“Really cool,” you agree with a grin. 

“Mweh heh heh!” Sans laughs, beaming at his brother, who’s currently looking at his cellphone. 

“uh, so, undyne just messaged me…” 

“You’re going to meet her? Have fun, brother!” 

Sans and you watch Papyrus gather his things and leave the house. You glance at Sans and wonder why he’s milling around and waiting for his brother to leave; does he want to talk to you? It appears like it because as soon as Papyrus has left, he turns back to you with a soft smile. 

“Hey, thanks for saying that to appease my brother,” he tells you. “He doesn’t always have an easy time around others.”

“I noticed,” you point out, feeling that there’s just no denying the fact that Papyrus is one awkward guy. “But I really meant what I said. He was a huge help to me just now.”

Sans looks impossibly even more happy at that and gently claps you on the back, holding his hand there for a moment. 

“You’re a good human for sure!”

Then he walks to the room he shares with his brother, humming happily and leaving you alone at the table. The shoulder he touched feels warm. 

You’re can’t help but feel really proud at his praise.

-

“Now you can put in the seeds,” Asgore tells you and Chara, watching the two of you with a proud smile while you help him get the garden ready. Dolores bought some seeds for him when she, Chara and the skeleton brothers visited the Ikea store, and today you’re planting them to make sure they’ll have enough time to sprout. The physical work isn’t something you usually enjoy, but working out here with these two is really peaceful and calming, so you don’t mind. It’s one of the yet rare warmer days in Ebott; not warm enough that you’d forego a jacket but in the sun it’s pleasant. You can hear Alphys and Sans discussing what to cook inside; either ramen as Alphys’ signature dish or one of the pie recipes Sans got from Toriel. Undyne is hesitantly trying to mediate, without much success apparently. You smile to yourself while you eavesdrop, the conversation inside getting increasingly overdramatic and funny as they threaten to defend their favourite dishes’ honour with giant swords and magical transformation brooches. 

You notice Chara looking up at you thoughtfully out of the corner of your eyes. Their own eyes are half-closed like always, their expression calm and focused, almost to the point of being completely expressionless. They always look like this and in combination with their fine red hair, pale skin and flushed cheeks, it makes them look like a doll on most days. 

“What?” You ask them quietly, putting another seed in the ground. 

“Nothing,” Chara replies. Their own voice is quiet too just like yours, but unlike yours it’s always like that. 

You’ve only rarely seen them get loud or rambunctious, or even just assertive like most of the children you’ve seen in your life so far. Instead they’re almost always in a state of calm thoughtfulness, making their way through the world quietly and carefully, seemingly completely at peace. 

Despite the fact that they tend to be so quiet, you know them well enough to understand that it would be useless to pressure them now when they don’t want to tell you what they’re thinking yet.

Instead, they listen attentively to Asgore when he explains how they’ll have to monitor the plants in the coming days and weeks, to make sure that they’re growing properly and to protect them from the cold and the harsher winds. Eventually, he sends them inside so they can do their homework, though you also suspect that he wants to make sure they don’t get sick. He tends to worry about their health a lot for some reason. Chara simply nods and goes inside without argument, apparently entirely content to go and do their homework. 

“They’re a really good kid,” you comment absentmindedly, watching them vanish inside the house through the glass door. 

“They are,” Asgore sighs, following your gaze with a sad smile. “Always so obedient and kind. I did not think they would let me be as family to them…” 

“Why not?” You wonder, looking up at him even though it means craning your neck back as far as it can go. “You’re a really good father.”

He sighs heavily, but his smile looks a little bit less sad from what you can tell through his shaggy beard. 

“Thank you. I appreciate your words. It can be difficult to hold on to hope when there are so many who would rather see Chara far away from me,” he explains. You know that he’s not just talking about the human authorities, who Dolores barely managed to keep in check. He’s also talking about his wife, who appears to be of the opinion that he doesn’t deserve being Chara’s father for some reason, even though she seems to try not to show that opinion while Chara is in the room. 

“You shouldn’t listen to those people,” you say, reaching up to pat his arm. “You’re doing a great job looking after them.”

“I do try,” he says thoughtfully. He seems to be in a mood to talk about his feelings, and since he’s usually the one who lends an open ear to everyone who needs it over a cup of tea, you turn towards him to signal that you’re listening to him attentively. “But there are days where I wish I had someone to ask for advice. I used to speak with Papyrus through a door when I was in exile, but while he would listen to me he has no experience in these matters…”

“You could ask Sans?” You suggest after thinking about it for a moment. 

“Sans?” Asgore blinks down at you. There’s something about his expression that you can’t quite place. 

“Well, he’s Papyrus’ older brother and from what I know, he used to take care of him a lot when they were young - he’s actually arguably still taking care of him a lot. So he should know at least a little bit about child-rearing, right?” You explain, feeling that this is solid advice. 

“I suppose you are not wrong…” Asgore muses. 

“I’m sure he could help you. Plus, he’s really positive and social, and he likes helping people. He takes that pretty seriously, especially when he promises that he’s going to help. He’d probably be a good listener,” you point out. “So far, whenever I had something I wanted to talk about, he was always there for me. I don’t see why he wouldn’t do the same for you.”

“I see,” Asgore says with a smile that’s a little too knowing for your tastes. 

“I just mean, he’s a really good friend,” you clarify. You should really make sure there won’t be any misunderstandings here. It doesn’t matter that you and Sans have been hanging out a lot since you were nice to his brother, to the point that you see him more than all your other housemates combined. You’re just… really getting along. 

“Of course,” Asgore agrees far too easily. 

You wish you could make him believe you. 

Secretly, you also kind of wish you could make yourself believe it. 

-

“Human! The magnificent Sans has a very important question for you!” 

Sans is standing in front of you with his battle body in pristine condition, washed and pressed and scented and you wonder what the occasion is. And why he’s talking that way, while you’re at it.

“Why are you calling me human, anyway?” You want to know. “You know what my name is.” 

“Yes, but you’re my favourite human, so you’re _the_ human,” Sans says with a wink. 

Oh. 

You wish you weren’t blushing at that, but from the way your cheeks are heating up you know that you totally are. How embarrassing. It’s just Sans. The funny, enthusiastic skeleton who’s kind of your best friend right now. Who’s grinning more and more widely upon seeing your reaction. 

Crap.

“Regardless! Human,” he continues, his voice becoming serious but no less excited, “this is of vital importance, so listen carefully.”

Well shit, you’re really intrigued now. Whenever he gets like that it’s either something actually serious or something fun he wants to try and rope you into, so it’s always worth finding out what it is. You hope for the latter, obviously. Embarrassment forgotten for the moment, you lean forwards when he does and wait for him to go on. This close, you can see the subtle shine of colours on his skull that you’ve already noticed before once you got to know him better. His bones are so pristine and pretty from up close, you could stare at them all day. 

….anyway.

“My brother, Papyrus…” Sans starts. Nothing new so far, he starts a lot of his sentences like that. He makes a dramatic pause to ensure his next statement will have the proper effect. “He borrowed a dating rulebook from the library and gave it to me! And it only makes sense that my most _favourite_ human helps me test the advice in this book! Are you in?” 

He gives you a wide, confident grin and holds out his hand for you to take, but you can also see a faint blush on his face and a hint of sweat beading on his skull. You’re so distracted by that that you need a moment to properly process his last statement. 

“You… want to go on a date with me?” You ask him incredulously, feeling your own blush intensify. That was not what you expected to happen today when you had the house for yourself! Until Sans walked in. Did he plan this?! It’s too much of a coincidence, he must have. 

“Yes, I do!” 

“But, I’m human,” you point out carefully. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to test a monster dating rulebook with another monster?”

Sans looks surprised and you mentally kick yourself. Why did you say that? That just sounds racist, doesn’t it? And you don’t even really want him to date another monster, because… well, just because!

Right. 

“I don’t care about that. I want to go on a date with someone who’s nice and funny and who I like, like you,” Sans explains, looking increasingly dejected now. “Does that really bother you?”

“No, it doesn’t actually,” you hurry to say. “I was just wondering… okay. Sure! Let’s go on a date.”

“Really?!” He perks up immediately and gives you a wide and happy grin, only to then immediately jump up and holler a loud ‘YES’ while you find yourself giggling. 

This guy is too adorable, honestly. 

He’s grabbing your hand and pulling you off the couch where you were planning to spend the rest of the day like a potato, dragging you over until you have a bit of space around you. 

“You want to do this now?” You ask him with a grin, only to get an enthusiastic nod in return. 

“Of course, human! There’s no time like the present! Speaking of presents…” 

He stretches his hand out towards you and before you can ask what he’s doing he has twisted his hand and you watch as a small, green heart floats out of your chest, hovering between you. Its colour is so intense that the entire rest of the room seems to be basked in complete darkness, with only Sans still visible, entirely in black and white. 

“Whoa,” you blurt out. “What’s this?”

“The dating hud!” Sans exclaims, looking around gleefully. “It’s how monsters go on dates!”

“Oh, okay,” you grin, feeling excited that you get to learn something new about monsters while on this fun friendship date. “And what’s that little heart thing?”

“That is your soul,” Sans explains. “The culmination of your being. Now, don’t be frightened, human! There’s no need to fret, your soul is perfectly safe! Nothing bad can happen to it in the dating hud, and I’ll make extra, extra sure to treat it well!”

“Uhm… okay.” If this was anyone other than Sans, you probably would have freaked out by now. Hearing that this little, fragile looking thing is your soul, and that it’s out of your body, is kind of frightening. It’s only the fact that you really like and trust Sans that keeps you calm right now. “That’s… that’s not going to have any side-effects, is it? I mean, you said nothing will happen, but could you maybe… explain?”

“Of course!” He whips out a book that you assume to be the dating rulebook and opens it at a previously marked page. “Achem! So, as you know, humans can’t use magic and their bodies are resistant to it! But! Monsters always use magic when in the dating hud or in a confrontation. So in order to be in the dating hud or a confrontation with a monster, a human’s soul needs to be outside of their body to act as a conduit for the magic that a monster might use.” 

Sans nods to himself and looks up at you. “That’s not actually in the book, but Papy explained it to me!” He stage whispers, causing you to giggle a bit. 

“Okay, so you won’t suddenly be able to read my thoughts or anything just because my soul is out here, right?” You want to know. 

“No, it doesn’t work like that,” Sans says with a shake of his head. “It’s just so the date will work! Be ready to be wooed like you have never wooed before!” 

“I’m very ready,” you snicker. 

“Great! So, first we need to press C to see all the statistics… oh. You, er, you probably can’t do that, huh?” He looks at you sheepishly while you frown in confusion.

“I have absolutely no idea what that’s supposed to mean,” you tell him. 

“O-okay, never mind then!” Sans insists, immediately flipping through the dating rulebook again while more beads of sweat start to appear on his skull. Aw. You didn’t want to make him nervous. But you really don’t know how you’re supposed to… press C or whatever. 

“Well! I can see the statistics at least, so I’ll just have to help you along!” Sans exclaims, frantically pushing past that little hiccup. “So, now that I’m very informed, we’re ready for step two! Which is - “ 

He breaks off again, now visibly flustered. “To ask you on a date. Which I’ve already done! How convenient!!” 

You bite your lower lip in order to stop yourself from laughing. You really don’t want him to think you’re laughing _at_ him, because you’re not. He’s just so adorable, that’s the thing. You’d never have thought that a stocky skeleton with a smooth baritone voice could be this cute, to be honest.

“S-step three!!” Sans reads aloud, the dating rulebook now half covering his blushing face. “Put on nice clothes to show that you care!”

He lowers the book and stares at you with eye lights bright as stars, suddenly regaining his confidence. 

“Mweh heh heh! Do you see?” He asks you, striking a pose with his arms flexing and one leg extended. “I am wearing my nicest clothes right now!”

“Oh no, should I have changed before?” You fret, playing along with his dramatic antics. This is a lot of fun, actually. 

“No? Why? You look perfect in what you’re wearing right now!” Sans says, stopping his flexing and posing to look at you happily. You don’t even know what to say to that. You were planning to just hang out at home alone, so you just threw on some casual sweatpants and a random shirt. He can’t be serious, right? Shit, you think you’re blushing again. 

“Aha! My genuine compliment was effective!” Sans says, grinning widely. “My dating power stat is unmatched!” 

“Uh, yeah, I didn’t expect to be complimented on wearing this,” you laugh awkwardly. Damn, this is such a random and wacky way of dating, why is it having such an effect on you? 

“Mweh! Mweh heh heh! In that case! It is time to present my secret weapon!” He reaches underneath his bandana and pulls out a neatly wrapped package with a little bow on top. “Behold! An actual present, just for you!” 

He steps closer and pushes it into your hands, careful not to touch the soul hovering just in front of your chest. You notice that you have a really hard time moving right now, and every time you do, your soul is twitching. But you still manage to unwrap his present and marvel at the perfect looking slice of pie inside. At Sans’ encouraging look, you take a bite and immediately, you can feel your expression transform into one of utter bliss. The taste is so delicious, it’s indescribable. 

“Wow. Sans, thank you! This is really good,” you praise him. Sans squees in return, his low voice briefly taking on a much higher register. You wonder if that affected your ‘dating power’ or whatever he called it just now. Judging from his face, it did. He watches you with increasing happiness as you finish the slice of pie, savouring every bite for how good it is. 

“I’m really sorry I don’t have anything for you,” you tell him once you’re done and he’s practically vibrating on the spot out of excitement. “I feel so unprepared for this.”

“That’s fine, you can borrow the dating rulebook later if you want,” Sans says. 

“Sounds good, this is fun,” you laugh. 

“R-really?”

“Yeah, really. I’m enjoying myself!” You watch Sans beam at you and blush a little more. 

“Well! In that case. Would you… would you like to take the next step?” He suddenly seems almost shy, something you haven’t seen from him before. That immediately causes you to feel flustered as well. He’s not asking what you think he’s asking, is he?

“I don’t know, what’s the next step?” You want to know. 

“In the book, it’s holding hands, and then… “ 

“And then…?” You prompt him when his mouth works without producing any sound for a bit. 

Sans looks at you and squares his shoulders, visibly drawing himself up. You can practically hear him giving himself an internal pep talk. 

“And then,” he says, taking your hands in his and leaning closer to you until his face is right in front of yours, “I do this…?” 

He leans in slowly, giving you plenty of time to pull away. 

You don’t. You feel breathless, the anticipation as he inches closer to you practically killing you. Still, you wait patiently for him to make contact - and when he does it’s not what you expected. It probably makes sense given that he has no lips, but Sans doesn’t kiss you in the way you’re used to. Instead, he gives you a nuzzle, his movements soft and careful and very unlike how he normally moves. There’s no rushing here at all, only the slow drag of bone against skin. His eye sockets close and he looks blissed out, as if this is the best thing that ever happened to him. Honestly, with the fireworks currently going off in your soul and the way his breath ghosting over your lips is sending delicious tingles down your spine, you’d argue that this is the best thing that ever happened to _you_. 

It takes what feels like ages, compressed into seconds, until he pulls away, because you feel that this moment was eternal but also over way too quickly. 

Sans opens his eyes slowly and this time, the lights in his eyes don’t just resemble stars, they’re actually shaped like them. He looks completely awed. You kind of feel the same way. Did you really just kiss a skeleton? A skeleton monster? Your best friend, who is _a freaking skeleton_???

And on the first date, no less. 

You feel giggles bubble up inside you and you can’t suppress them, so you hurry to speak before Sans thinks you’re laughing at him.

“I think I need to know more about this step. Can you do that again?” 

Watching his expression shift into the happiest one you’ve seen on him yet, a smile so genuinely and deeply happy that there are these adorable little crinkles at the corners of his eye sockets, is a special treat in itself. 

“Of course, human.” 

He nuzzles you again. 

And then again. 

And just… one more time… 

You have no idea what you’re doing or how dating a skeleton will go in the future, but you’re absolutely sure that this is the best date you’ve ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was Underswap! All together now: aaaaawwww. I hope this offset the darkness from the Underfell chapter a little :3


	3. Swapfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that took a while. I'm sorry for neglecting this AU fic for so long :C I had a lot more trouble writing the Swapfell verse than I thought, even after I defined my headcanons for it [here.](https://rehlia.tumblr.com/post/164797494475/swapfell-headcanons) I think maybe with the next AUs I tackle, I'll try to write a bit more freestyle, just to see if that helps. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

This was undoubtedly the worst idea you’ve ever had in your life. 

You’re still not entirely sure what exactly possessed you to apply for a job to these monsters, never mind actually accepting it. Sure, the offered pay is incredible and sure, it’s bound to be one of the most interesting cases you’ll ever take during your career and one where you might do the most good to help, but you’re doubting more and more whether it will actually be worth the trouble. 

As you’re lead into a clearing where a large piece of cloth has been spanned between several trees by a squad of human soldiers, you can’t help but notice that the atmosphere in the makeshift tent is noticeably tense, if not outright hostile. The human soldiers seem fidgety and the monsters surrounding the table under the canopy of the cloth are eyeing them and you with open distrust. 

At the table, the two monarchs of monsterkind are already waiting for you, the human child that accompanies them sitting between them and clutching their blue flower friend to their chest. Both the child and the flower look unnaturally calm considering the situation. 

You take a seat opposite of them, the human soldiers taking their position behind your chair and next to you. Your chair has several pillows on them but still leaves you way below the eye level of the monsters present. They really are huge and you can’t help but notice how their size in combination with their rough and battle-worn appearance intimidates you far more than you thought it would. 

If you want to, you can still leave, you tell yourself as you introduce yourself to the king and queen. You don’t have to stay. The soldiers kept telling you to turn around and go back to where you came from; they’d be more than happy to take you out of Ebott, that ramshackle collection of relief effort tents and shacks built out of any material they had been able to scrape together on short notice. 

Which is part of the reason why you’re here of course. 

It’s pretty clear from the appearance of the camp and the way the monsters interact that they desperately need help, and so far all they’ve got is a social media manager who tries to get them some positive PR which hasn’t helped all that much yet. As a lawyer for integration cases, you think you’d be able to do a lot of good for them, but seeing the actual circumstances from up close now you have to wonder if you aren’t biting off more than you can chew here. 

“So, I have been informed that you want to negotiate a peace contract between the two of you…?” you begin carefully. 

“Yes,” Quen Toriel says. 

“Indeed,” King Asgore says at the exact same moment. 

They both glance at each other with utter contempt while their monster guards tense in the background. It's a pretty wild collection; several bunnies, a lizard flanked by a cat and an alligator, two skeletons, a robot… the list goes on and only gets crazier from there. 

“They fought for so long that they can't trust each other without one,” the child sitting between them speaks up. For some reason, this is not met with contempt but instead prompts the monsters to calm down. Pretty strange. 

“All right. Now, I feel that I should remind you that this isn't specialty, but I'll see what I can do.”

“That's okay. I trust you,” the child tells you with a serene smile while the flower in their arms huffs. 

It's ultimately those two you end up negotiating with the most. While the king and queen do speak up about their wishes and grievances, they simply can't manage to do so without starting to bicker and stall the whole proceedings, which isn't helping. You didn't expect to end up playing what boils down to a glorified divorce lawyer for a couple of aggressive monster monarchs, but that's pretty much what this is. Neither of them is initially willing to back down from their demands and it's only thanks to Chara and Flowey, whose names you learn over the course of the proceedings, that there's any progress at all.

Since neither king nor queen is willing to let go of even a fraction of their power, they end up forming a sort of royal co-rulership in which a trusted party (which they both agree to be Chara, just about the only thing they can agree on without bickering) acts as a tiebreaker in case they can't come to a joint decision. Chara looks rather tired by the end of the discussion and you get the impression that they'll have a lot of unhappy tie breaking to do in the future. That in turn makes you insist on adding some protection clauses to the contract so Chara will still get to be a child in some capacity. You're reluctant to let them take on such a big role in the first place since they're only a child, but it's pretty clear that without them, the situation would not end well. The king and queen don't like that, but reluctantly agree when you inform them that child labour is not to be trifled with under human law. This is only a solution in the first place because of the state of emergency that the monsters are currently in. 

Once the question of rulership is dealt with, the meeting devolves into a discussion of a hundred small grievances that both sides air out to each other until you put your foot down and insist that food and housing for the population take precedence now that they figured out how to run this show. 

Unfortunately, the military won't allow you to contact the person owning the property at the foot of the mountain, so it seems like everyone will be living in the ramshackle shelters for the foreseeable future. 

It's night when the meeting is finally over and by the end of it, you feel desperately exhausted. 

Both Asgore and Toriel order one of their soldiers to escort you to your tent, even though you already have the military escorting you. It's probably going to take a while until you won't be constantly hovered over by three different factions at once, you think tiredly.

Your escorts are a bunny soldier and one of the skeletons you saw at the meeting, as well as the soldier in command of the unit guarding the monsters on the mountain, a man named Kyle. There's a bit of a kerfuffle as neither he nor the monsters seem to want the other at their backs, which eventually works out to having Kyle walk on one side and the two monsters on the other, with you sandwiched inbetween. 

This is honestly starting to feel ridiculous. 

You can only hope the relations between monsters and humans will get better in the future. And the relations between the two monster factions, of course.

The stony silence of your escorts while they bring you to your tent doesn't give you a very good feeling about that.

-

“A photoshoot?” you wonder out loud, somehow feeling the need to repeat it even though you heard Dolores perfectly fine when she said it the first time. 

“Yes. People need to actually see the monsters in different situations. They need to have the chance to perceive them as normal, to see them in everyday situations. Apart from their looks they’re not all that different from us, and if people could see that I think it would help a lot in gaining more support,” Dolores explains. 

“Hmmm.” 

Her explanation does make sense, you suppose, although that will still leave her with the task of wrangling highly aggressive creatures who look the part into domestic activities. Like meeting Darth Vader in the supermarket while grocery shopping. It sounds kind of comical put that way, so maybe it’s actually going to work. If you imagine Asgore shopping for a gallon of milk at the local whole foods store that sure makes him look better than sitting next to his embittered ex-wife brooding. 

If she does intend to take pictures of Asgore, that is. 

“So who’s the lucky monster you’ll take pictures of?” you wonder, wanting that question answered now that you thought about it. 

“They assigned Sans and Papyrus to me,” Dolores says. 

“...you’re kidding, right?” You actually sit up straighter hearing this bit of news, looking away from the paper you had been slouched over because the drafts for a proposal to get permission to sell monster produced goods to human markets has tired you out a little bit by now. It’s an important proposal that could help improve conditions in Ebott if it was approved, but there’s so many legal matters to look after with nobody to help you that you’re just perpetually tired by now, especially with all the hurdles the humans keep introducing. You already tried contacting some of your lawyer acquaintances, like Shawn for example, but nobody was really willing to come and help out too. 

That actually means that it would be really nice if Dolores was successful with her social media campaigns. Some good press might help you do your work more efficiently too. 

But of all the monsters available - Sans and Papyrus? Really? 

“I know, I was initially surprised too,” Dolores admits. 

“Surprised is a bit of an understatement,” you comment. 

Sans and Papyrus are skeleton monsters and look decidedly eerie with their filed teeth and scarred bones. Especially since monsters don’t actually scar under under usual circumstances from what you’ve learned - they’re experiments bolstered by some funky soul liquid called determination or something, giving them unusual properties. You heard Toriel and Asgore bicker about it.

On top of that, they were bred and raised to become elite soldiers under Toriel’s rule and were sent to Asgore in order to act as spies and sleeper agents. Only Papyrus had apparently started to feel more loyal towards Asgore, causing a rift between the brothers and more complications in the relations between the two monarchs. You had been given the dirty details of the situation by the monarchs too, first by Asgore and then by Toriel, separately, heavily edited for their own gain and with warnings not to trust the other side. From years of tedious court proceedings, you’re taking that as a sign not to trust either party and figure that the truth lies in the middle between the two extremes. 

In any case, both Sans and Papyrus are powerful, likely dangerous, and currently at odds with each other. You think they must have fought at some point and worked out some sort of dominance deal, because Papyrus keeps calling Sans his lord while wearing a studded leather collar and honestly, it’s pretty creepy. 

You have absolutely no idea how on earth Dolores intends to make those two look presentable and relatable enough for a social media picture. 

“Wow,” you tell her, “I never thought I’d be saying this, but my job sure sounds easy.” 

Dolores snorts in response, but doesn’t disagree. 

“As far as I know, it’s a part of their punishment,” Dolores informs you. “Both Asgore and Toriel are unhappy with them because of their treachery, so they’re given the jobs nobody else wants to do right now as a way to humiliate them.” 

“Isn’t it sad that that’s one of the least messed up things they’ve done so far?” you muse. “With how they usually behave, I would have expected torture or something.”

“Me too, actually,” Dolores agrees with a sigh. “Perhaps they want to make a good impression. In any case, I’m glad this is all there is to the punishment.” 

You don’t really get to reply. Before you can say anything, the flap to your and Dolores’ tent is thrown back dramatically, revealing Sans and his brother Papyrus in the entrance. Sans is wearing leather shorts, a leather armour top and a scarf, with matching leather boots and gloves, like something straight out of a kinky movie. He stares at the two of you as if you’ve personally insulted him, which is probably exactly how he’s feeling given that he’s here for a punishment. 

“well?!” he snaps impatiently when neither you nor Dolores say anything at his dramatic entrance. 

“Hi,” Dolores says, her entire demeanour utterly calm. 

Sans’ expression goes from insulted to deeply offended. 

“is this the only thing you’re going to say?!”

“For now,” Dolores confirms. You can’t help but feel impressed by her steel ovaries. Sans may not be as large as other monsters, but he’s still an elite soldier with a more than shady past, and his skull is marred by three deep gouges running over his left eye socket. His teeth are filed into sharp points, giving him the smile of a piranha. 

“i don’t know why i expected anything better from you,” he huffs. The disdain is practically dripping from his voice. “the texts falling into our prison were almost enough to trick me into thinking your species might be _intelligent_. what a foolish notion.”

Wow, this guy is a dick. 

You have barely finished thinking this and then Sans is standing in front of you, his sharp-toothed skeleton smile just a little bit too wide for comfort. 

“you want to say anything, human?”

“N-no,” you stutter out in shock. How did he move so fast?! 

“hmm. it seems this one might not be a completely lost cause yet. good to know.” He turns away from you abruptly and marches back to the entrance, casually addressing Dolores on the way there. “we’ll wait outside for you to be ready.”

“Did you just threaten me?!” Now that he isn’t right in front of you anymore, the sentence just bursts out of you. You can’t believe this guy. You’re here to help him and his people, and that’s what you get in return? You didn’t even _do_ anything!

“want me to tell the truth or say i was just ribbing you?” Sans turns back to you and winks, somehow, which should be impossible since he’s a skeleton but here you are, his sharp smile still entirely too wide. 

You laugh more out of surprise than anything else, because you immediately make the connection between the word ribbing and him being a skeleton now that the thought has entered your brain. His winking eye opens quickly and he looks back to you with an expression that shows almost equal amounts of surprise. 

For one moment, the two of you look at each other with something other than hostility.

But then he snaps his head forwards again. 

“come on, mutt!” he snaps, and leaves the tent. 

His brother gives you and Dolores a glance that you think is meant to be at least slightly apologetic, and then he turns away too, letting the tent flap fall closed behind him. 

Mutt?!

“What the hell?!” you mouth at Dolores without actually saying anything, because you know they’d be able to hear you outside. The lengths of fabric that have been hung up and layered on top of each other in order to create the tent-house you and Dolores live in aren’t exactly soundproof. 

Dolores shrugs somewhat helplessly before she gathers her stuff and follows the skeletons outside. You can hear her telling them to follow her, sounding professional as ever. 

Well one thing’s for sure, you sure as hell don’t envy her for her job.

-

“brace yourself!”

You widen your stance and raise your arms with your fists balled, although you have no idea if you're doing it correctly and thus end up feeling a little bit silly. Judging by Sans’ unimpressed expression, you probably look just as dumb as you feel. Alphys is snickering in the background, making you feel even worse, while Kyle is glaring at her. After giving you a crash course in self-defence, he only reluctantly agreed to let the monsters train you too and insisted to be present at the session. Thankfully, that's all the audience you have at least. You don't want to embarrass yourself in front of even more people. 

You're not given much more time to contemplate this though, because Sans suddenly reaches forwards with a strange twisting motion and your vision blacks out. You flinch, but then you notice that you can still see _some_ things; namely Sans himself although he appears white and colourless, as well as a small green heart floating in front of you.

“What's _that_?” you ask, feeling blindsided by this sudden development. You knew before this that monsters fight with magic in encounters, but you never saw what it looked like before and nobody had said anything about green floating hearts. Is this some sort of magic attack from Sans? You hope it's not dangerous. 

“your soul.” Sans looks completely casual, as if he hadn't just called this heart something you thought didn't even exist.

“What, like literally?” you question. You try to reach up and wrap your hands around it, but it feels strangely difficult to coordinate your hands, especially since your soul keeps twitching too whenever you try to move. “You could have warned me before just putting it out there, you know?”

“that's your soul opinion on seeing it for the first time?”

You snicker quietly to yourself while pretending your not, while Sans is pretending not to care. He keeps making these and you have no idea what to do with them, so you decided just to take them at face value and laugh about them at some point. He seems to like that, if his reaction is anything to go by. While there’s always a moment where he acts all pointedly nonchalant, eventually his grin with the terrifying filed teeth, grows wider. You're never entirely sure if that's threatening or genuine either. Hard to say, he's _always_ grinning and more often than not it seems to be out of genuine enjoyment at the misfortune of others or as a threat or because he's using his nearly boundless energy for some sort of mischief. 

But, yeah, most of the time when it’s directed at you he seems to be genuine and the fact that you're openly smiling at his pun seems to spur him on. You’re working with the theory that maybe he’s at least a little bit like you in that he appreciates a good laugh when everything else is so grim around you, which honestly endears him to you more than you thought. Unfortunately, you have little to give back to him in that regard.

“I mean,” you stutter. Try as you might, you don't manage to come up with a good pun in return. It’s alway too sudden, and you overthought it now, so you just end up sounding lame. “...yeah?”

Sans actually chuckles at your less than impressive retort, a low and surprisingly smooth sound that may well be the happiest you’ve ever heard him make.

“then let us begin,” he suddenly declares, and before you can even think another thing there are rows and rows of bones flying towards you, impacting your soul and causing you to cry out in pain. You feel a sensation like a thousand needles piercing you all at once. Some instinctual part of you takes over and you drop to the ground, curling up with your body curled protectively around your soul, hands over your head. 

“what on earth are you _doing_ , human!” Sans roars, obviously not happy with your performance. 

“I'm trying to protect myself?!” you shout back when it becomes clear that his attacks have stopped. “What the hell! You didn't even tell me how to defend myself!”

“i obviously expected you to try and dodge at the very least!” he shoots back. “how is curling up so you can be hit more easily going to help you?”

“I thought I could hold the attacks off with my body or something,” you grumble, slowly standing up again even though your entire body - and soul - hurts. 

“useless,” Sans decides. “don’t get hit. that's the strategy were going to work on.”

“I thought a big tough guy like you would be all about facing danger heads on or something,” you say. Maybe you shouldn't needle him, but you're still annoyed. 

“mweh heh heh. you clearly have no idea about my true power,” Sans laughs, sliding easily from angry back into cocky and self-assured. “check me!”

“Check?” you wonder. “Like checking you out? No offence, but you're a bit too aggressive for my usual tastes, never mind the whole teeth situation - “

“i meant my stats!” Sans roars, acting all indignant while a faint, soft blue blush creeps over his cheekbones. 

You barely manage to hold back your laughter. Wow, you did not expect to fluster him with that. You knew he probably meant something else even if you didn't know what, you just wanted to poke fun at him a little bit. Who could've guessed he'd blush just from that? Or at all? That's almost cute, as much as a skeleton monster with filed teeth can be cute. 

Well. He is pretty small and round apart from that. If you imagine him without the sharp teeth, and maybe also without the scars, he'd easily qualify for adorable, actually. 

Across from you, Sans is blushing more strongly now. 

“human what are you doing. i told you i didn't mean this kind of ‘check’! stop this now!” 

“Okay, sorry,” you giggle. Maybe he'll realise you're mostly kidding if you laugh out loud after all. “I still don't know what you mean with a check otherwise though.” 

“i suppose it's not something you can do without magic,” he huffs. 

Oh, did he forget that you can't use magic? You don't know whether to be flattered or insulted. 

“a soul has a certain level of energy indicating health,” Sans explains, now all business. “we call them hp or hit points. like in those video games you humans like to waste your time on. a use of words coined by our lovely guard captain.”

He rolls his eye lights in an obvious display of annoyance. It's pretty clear that despite the fact that he and Alphys seem to be close and that she trained him, he doesn't approve of this invention of hers. 

“regardless! would you like to guess my health?” Just like that he's back to grinning like a maniac. 

“What, you never got hit and so now it's over a million or something?” you guess. “Does that mean if I break your streak you'll have to start over again?”

“i have exactly one,” he tells you smugly. 

“...what?” 

Does that mean what you think it does?

“one hit point. a single hit and i would be gone,” he confirms. 

“What the hell?!” you blurt out. 

“i know, it's very impressive. who else but a monster of the highest fighting prowess would manage to not only survive, but rise this far in the ranks with a single hp! it's okay to be shaken by my achievements,” he brags. 

Is this guy for real?! 

“What the fuck, and you didn't even tell me beforehand? What if I had been faster?! I don't want to be responsible for accidentally hurting or killing you!” You don't even care that your voice is getting a bit loud. This isn't okay?! It doesn't matter how good he is, when all it would take is one small accident -

“you would never be able to hit me,” he says dismissively. 

“That's not the point!” you argue. “I would like to know about stuff like this beforehand anyway just so I can be careful! Just in case! I'd feel terrible if something happened to you because of me!”

“why would you care?” he asks you. 

And the terrible thing is, he's completely genuine. He really has no idea why it would bother you if you hurt or killed him, or why you might care if he's dead. True, he's not the nicest guy around, but that doesn't mean you want him dead. He makes you laugh. He's even helping your right now even if he's rough about it. So of course of you care?

The two of you stare at each other, a gap between you in how you approach the world. You think you get an inkling of how the monsters live - the idea that kill and be killed is all there is, caring is a flaw, and strength is everything just to survive. You wonder if maybe he's getting the reverse. If he might begin to understand how differently you see the world, that caring is second nature for you and survival isn't something you ever had to seriously worry about.

Sans ends the encounter quickly afterwards and refuses to look at you when he leaves. 

\- 

Despite your initial reservations, Papyrus and Undyne are surprisingly pleasant to be around. Sure, they're awkward as hell, but they're also quiet and a lot less aggressive than the usual monsters. That doesn't mean they're not dangerous of course. Papyrus is still a biologically engineered weapon and Undyne is a scientist who not only has done some questionable things that you prefer not to think about, but who also keeps subtly needling Papyrus about letting her run some tests on him so she can see how he was created. 

Still. Spending your afternoon off sitting quietly on a couch and watching anime is such a pleasant change of pace in comparison to the usual craziness of Ebott. Undyne is particularly fond of fighting anime; the bigger the swords and the more brutal the fights, the better. She's also fond of magical girl anime for some reason though. On the Internet she seems to have found several series that have very bloody magical girl fights, which she's now into. Papyrus doesn't seem to have a preference of his own, or if he does he's content to keep quiet about it and go with whatever Undyne wants. 

Personally, you could do without the gratuitous violence, but even that considered this moment is one of the most peaceful you've had during your time here. 

“Ten Bucks The Pink One Dies Next,” Papyrus mumbles suddenly, halfway through the episode. 

“Nah, she's too main character to die,” Undyne decides. “Maybe in the last episode she'll die. But not before. Those ten bucks are mine.”

Papyrus doesn't show much of a change in his expression, his empty sockets and stiff skull far less capable of displaying what he feels. You still get the impression that he feels happy though. All of you are sitting on separate rickety chairs, close together but not touching, around your laptop. The monsters have their own computers, but their technology isn't necessarily compatible with human stuff, so you invited Undyne and Papyrus to use yours for anime streaming after the three of you had watched some super old vhs recordings on Undyne’s machine together. 

“I think she's gonna make it too,” you add, “but I think her friend won't make it.”

“But that one has a giant sword that can grow!” Undyne disagrees, obviously viewing that as the central argument. 

“Yeah, That One Is Tough,” Papyrus agrees with her. “A Knight And All That.”

“You're biased because of Sans,” Undyne accuses him, although it's in a very calm way, without any sharpness at all. 

“M’lord Is Very Impressive, I Can't Help It,” he insists. As much as you can call it ‘insist’ anyway, his voice is still quiet and soft, easily spoken over if you wanted to. 

“Can I ask you why you call him that?” you blurt out. It's only after the words have already left your mouth that your thoughts catch up with you and you wonder if that's maybe too sensitive a topic to talk about during anime night. “Uhm, I mean…”

Papyrus laughs.

It's a dorky kind of laugh that matches his brother but is also unrestrained and carefree. It’s loud, for him. You stare at him in surprise. You hadn't known that he could sound like that. That any of the monsters could sound like that. 

“Nyeh Heh Heh. I Thought You'd Have It Figured Out By Now After My Brother Told You About His HP. Think About It,” Papyrus challenges you, looking into your eyes with an amused, lazy sort of expression. “I'm Big, Tough, A Bred Fighter With More Special Attacks Than You Can Count. And Yet He's My Lord And I'm His Mutt. What Does That Say About _His_ Fighting Prowess?”

“Oh.” You think about that for several moments, caught off-guard by how talkative he is today. “So it's to protect him? Or is he really that much stronger than you?”

Papyrus waves his hand back and forth in a thoughtful gesture. 

“Define Strong,” he eventually replies. “Physically, Of Course Not. Magically, He Has Bigger Reserves But His Damage Output Is Lower. However, He's Clever And Found Ways To Circumvent Those Limitations. He Fights More Creatively Than I Do.”

“He fights _dirty_ like a thieving back-alley whore,” Undyne cackles. 

“He'd say he doesn't,” Papyrus merely grins, although you notice he personally doesn't disagree. 

You suppress a smile of your own. The words might be crude and the whole world view is miles away from what you're used to, but you're aware that this conversation meant something. This kind of information is important to monsters, that much you understand by now. Details about battle strategies could be used against a monster if disclosed to an enemy, after all. Some wouldn't even tell their own family about stuff like this. And yet they told you. Joked about it, even. 

It's a sign of trust that should feel backwards, but ultimately leaves you with a familial sort of warmth radiating through your body. You feel comfortable and good. 

You didn’t think you’d ever feel like this in Ebott.

“Anyway, ten bucks the sword swinging girl survives,” Undyne offers. 

“Yeah,” Papyrus agrees. 

“I'll win this,” you challenge. 

Two episodes later, you and Undyne high five while Papyrus grumbles about having lost both of his bets. 

You think that anime night might be your new favourite activity here. 

-

“this way,” Sans tells you, leading you through the back alleys of the Ebott tent city with quick strides. 

“Did they say what they wanted?” you ask him, worried at suddenly being summoned by the king and queen. You only just finished a long session with them earlier today and you thought it had gone well; you'd hate for there to be complications now all of a sudden. 

“no. they don't really like to explain themselves, especially not to me,” he explains. His expression and tone don't change, but there's a tightness to his shoulders that tells you that he's not all that happy about having lost the royal's favour. There's no telling if that's because of his status or for personal reasons though. 

Just when you're about to ask, there's a deafening roar in the air and the ground shakes. Unthinkingly, you stumble forwards and throw Sans to the ground, covering him with your body. Wood and glass splinters around you and your ears begin to hurt from the noise. Sans is flailing underneath you, but when he manages to extract himself everything is already over. 

Black smoke clouds the air and makes it hard to breathe. You cough when you get up again yourself. You hear fire crackling somewhere behind you. 

“what the fuck!” Sans yells at you, a rage in his voice that you didn't expect. “why would you do that?!”

“What?” you ask, feeling dazed. You look behind you and find the quarters you just left with Sans in ruins, the shacks and tents torn apart completely under the force of what you can only assume must have been a terrorist attack. The air is thick and over the black smoke you can see a fine, silvery sheen.

Dust is in the air. Nearly invisible death hazing the site of destruction. 

Oh no. 

Oh no, what about your friends?! Dolores and Papyrus and Undyne? Frisk and Flowey live with the royals and Alphys guards them so they should be safe, but - 

A strong, boney hand grabs your arm and pulls you back, away from the carnage. You didn't even notice you had started to move towards it. 

“don't go closer,” Sans says darkly. 

“But - “

You don't even get to finish speaking. Without any warning whatsoever, the world blacks out around you and there's a tingling sense of static somewhere at the Base of your brain before everything pops back into existence around you again. 

You're no longer in Ebott. 

You're in a room, furnished with pirate flags and bookcases filled to the brim and a rug rimmed with stitched fire and a bed painted like a rocket. 

“What?” you ask again. Everything seems to be happening to fast. You're barely processing what's happening and you have to admit you're pretty confused about the sudden change of locations. 

“stay here,” Sans instructs you. “my room is safe.”

Then he's gone. Just like that. He literally vanishes into thin air and leaves you blinking like a moron. 

“Wait!” you shout after him, moments after he already left. “Sans!! Oh fucking hell!” 

You can’t help but curse as your thoughts catch up with you. A terrorist attack on Ebott, there has been property damage and death judging by the dust. You don’t know if your friends are still alive and Sans has somehow transported you - teleported you? - to an unknown location. Pulling out your cellphone, you curse again when you see that you have no reception. You look around the room and find two doors and a window you could try, and decide on the window since you think that’ll give you the best idea of where you are. 

When you’ve pushed the window open and poke your head out, you’re met with a gust of icy wind that makes you shiver. You see snow on the ground and on the tightly grouped pines growing in front of the window, looking left and right shows you more houses in the distance and a shed close by. Something is off about this place though, something about the light… 

You look up, and go entirely still. 

Far, far above you is a cragged, rocky ceiling covered in stalactites. Fat, heavy clouds swirl around them, raining snow onto the village you’re apparently in. They also glow and cover the area in a strange, all-encompassing light that seems to come from everywhere at once. There don’t seem to be many shadows in this place, and it’s creeping you out.

That’s. 

That’s not just any cave, it can’t be. 

This must be the Underground. 

Shit. 

You quickly pull your head back through the window and close it, suddenly worried about your safety yet again. Asgore and Toriel had mentioned to you that they had left some of their monsters behind to guard the place just in case, and while those left behind get updates from them regularly, you’re not sure if they’d feel hospitable towards a lone human down here. Considering that the Underground was a kill or be killed world, you have some suspicions about how you might be treated. 

You eye the two doors in the room suspiciously and wonder if you should leave them alone, if there are other monsters in this house that might harm you, or if it would be better to know what options you have in case you need to run away or something. 

Deciding that the latter is the better option, you first open the door next to the window, which turns out to be a closet filled with a variety of ripped leather clothes. 

This must be Sans’ room, you realise. Huh. Looking around, you can’t help but think that this room is different from what you would have expected. Despite his goofy puns, he can be so grumpy and focused on success above anything else sometimes. You would have thought that he likes a more minimalistic or austere style, something strict that fits his desire to be taken seriously. Instead, his room is colourful, almost fun, littered with personal items. You can spot science fiction titles, books about quantum mechanics, fairy tales and joke books in the book cases. There’s a treadmill in a corner that you hadn’t seen initially because it’s covered in scarves. A tiny tornado swirls around and around next to the rocket bed. 

The room has so much personality. So many hints at more layers to Sans that you would never have guessed at, even though you probably should have. 

Somehow, you find this incredibly endearing because it’s so random and _genuine_ , this isn’t some method of presenting himself or intimidating others like what Sans usually does. This is his private room, a space for himself. 

And he brought you here to keep you safe. 

A strange warmth rises slowly in your chest that you immediately stamp back down and then try to pretend you didn’t notice. You have more important things to do now. Like checking the other door, and the house, and… and just doing something productive so you don’t drive yourself mad with worry while stuck down here, unable to do anything. 

The rest of the house is similarly eclectic as Sans’ room, with mismatching and damaged but colourful furniture and very new looking electrical appliances. It surprises you that they wouldn’t take this up to the surface, but then again maybe they want to spare their belongings any further damage. Since everyone is still living in tents and huts, it’s easy for belongings to get wet or broken. What you assume to be Papyrus’ room is the only one that looks as if it has been cleared out; only a bare mattress with some very old looking crumpled sheets on top and a couple of broken action figures littering the floor are left in it, along with some old volumes about puzzle construction. 

You end up pacing back and forth between Sans’ room and Papyrus’ room once you’ve finished exploring, deeply frustrated that you can’t actually help while everyone up in Ebott is in danger and helping out in the aftermath of the attack. Worse, your worries grow stronger and stronger as time passes. Every time you check your cellphone, since at least the internal clock still works, you feel something inside you curl up tighter and tighter. 

Silently, you beg for everyone to be okay.

When you finally hear a soft pop in Sans room, you hurry back in from the corridor, nearly bowling him over as he looks around for you. He smells like smoke and dirt and something chemical. And dust.

“Are you okay?! What about everyone else?!”

“you should have stayed in this room,” he grumbles, although there’s no real malice behind it. 

“Sans, please,” you beg. 

“our mutual acquaintances are all okay,” he tells you quietly, and with much less energy than what you’re used from him. “although a third of that district’s monsters got dusted.” 

“Oh god. I’m so sorry.” You don’t know what to say, stuck between relief that at least those close to you are safe, and grief for those who died in the attack. They had friends and family too, and it feels wrong to feel so relieved when you know others are hurting. 

Sans is watching you with a frown. 

“you worry too much about strangers!” he snaps at you. 

“Excuse me?!”

“what did i tell you about evading attacks instead of trying to take them? what you did when the bomb went off was risky and stupid! and yet here you stand fumbling about others when you could have died yourself!” 

He looks angry, and he sounds angry too. But you can hear the worry that fuels it. The genuine fear. That surprises you. You’ve only been here for a few weeks and you and Sans had interacted a lot in that time, yeah, but still. If someone had asked you, you wouldn’t necessarily have said that you two are that close. 

Nevertheless, you can’t help but notice how carefully he holds onto you when, after several more minutes of scolding from his and many apologies from your side, he teleports you back up to Ebott. 

-

In the aftermath of the attack, Sans is surprisingly clingy. Not necessarily in a touchy feely way. He doesn’t touch you at all, actually, but he keeps showing up at your tent for no real reason, often already waiting there when you leave it in the morning, accompanying you to whatever appointment you have that day before leaving for his own. He’s also there to accompany you _back_ without fail, even if you never tell him when the appointment ends, or when you don’t even know yourself. 

It’s kind of sweet, but also a little bit stalkery. 

Dolores finds it hilarious in any case, and lets you know as loudly as possible. You suspect some monsters find it just as hilarious, but they don’t seem to have the guts to be as open about it as she is. You don’t know why, it’s not as if you’re dangerous when compared to most monsters. 

You’re still waffling on whether or not you should say something about it when one evening, Sans invites you out for dodge training.

“Dodge training,” you ask skeptically, eyeing the dark sky outside and the long, round case in Sans’ right hand. 

“yes, stop wasting time by repeating my words!” he grumbles, giving you a sideways look that manages to tell you that he does actually mean something else but for various reasons doesn’t want to say that out loud. 

“Okay,” you agree, deciding that you want to see what this is about now. 

You take his offered hand and are whisked away into darkness, it takes you several seconds of blinking before your eyes get used to the sudden change in brightness. Instead of in your tent, you’re now standing on what appears to be the slope of a mountain, millions of stars blinking overhead. 

“Oh wow,” you can’t help but blurt out, fascinated by the display. The spring air is clear and crisp, and you pull your jacket a little tighter around your body, but you can’t take your eyes off the sky. It looks beautiful. 

“mweh heh heh,” you hear Sans chuckle darkly, as if he was a villain who had just achieved world domination. “i see my surprise was a success.”

“Dude what the hell,” you laugh, finally looking back down only to see him looking at you with a proud and sharp look that seems to pierce your soul. Not that that makes you nervous or anything. “Why so secretive?” 

“obviously nobody can know of my plans,” he explains impatiently. “it might be dangerous for either of us.”

“You’ve been following me for, like, a whole week or something,” you point out. 

“yes, and? my brother has been following dolores.” He raises an eyebrow at you. “the king and queen ordered that you two should be protected just in case, while the king and queen and flowey personally guard chara. why is that surprising after an attack?” 

You… did not notice that. At all. And when Dolores made fun of you and Sans you of course immediately assumed that she meant his behaviour. Apparently though, she had been laughing about _your_ complete inability to see it for the pragmatic act of bodyguarding that it was all along. You feel heat creep over your face. 

“I, uhm.” 

Eloquent. 

Sans laughs again, but this time it’s different. Lower, darker, rougher with a suggestive edge to it that makes your neck tingle. 

“perhaps there will be dodge practise after all,” Sans tells you with a fiendish grin. “unless it turns out you don’t actually want to dodge.” 

The thing is, he approaches quickly, but not so quickly that you wouldn’t be able to pull away if you really disliked the idea. So when he slowly, ever so slowly drags his nasal bone against the skin of your nose, you have nobody else to blame but you. There are questions in your head, a ton of exclamation marks, some curses at yourself and some serious side eye from the more rational part of you at the part of you that’s currently doing mental cartwheels all over your brain. 

A delicious shudder runs through your body when you feel Sans’ breath on your mouth, warm and inviting. 

You decide you can put the worries aside for later, and pull him close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: AU typical violence, terrorist attacks, monster death,


	4. Mobtale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. This chapter took me ages, I swear. I had a part of the beginning written for like... almost nine months?! And then I added bits and pieces here, and when people voted for it I finally sat down and wrote the rest but it was still a real struggle. I hope you all like the result ;v;' 
> 
> If you want to influence what I write next, be sure to check out [my Tumblr](https://rehlia.tumblr.com/)!

Being fired from your job at the local newspaper is yet another setback in a string of many. 

After your friends moved away you had been saving up for a variety of things you wanted to buy to spoil yourself a little. But now you have to rethink your plans. It's so inconvenient, although you're glad that thanks to the monster magic enhanced technology you have in your apartment, you can at least keep selling some articles on a freelance basis. 

It's undeniable that the monster's reappearance had sped up humanity's development to an almost frightening degree. A look around your own apartment is all you need to confirm how much better the coexistence of humans and monsters is making your life. Especially since the new laws passed that allowed trading and cooperation between the two about, oh, sixty years ago or so.

Your entire apartment is lit by electricity, gas light bulbs emitting a gentle yellow light that allows you to stay up and work late without the hassle of candles or oil lamps. The electricity is provided by the local Core, an underground facility transforming geothermal heat into clean energy. The cost for the electricity is low thanks to the equally low production and maintenance cost of the core technology itself. The Core also provides your house with heating in the winter and cooling in the summer. A marvel for sure. 

On your wooden desk under the window rests a typewriter, more paper in its roll than what should rationally fit there thanks to monster magic, making it unnecessary to roll in new paper more than maybe once a week. The ink band is also far longer than it should logically be, and the typewriter has a feature preventing paper jams as well. All in all, it makes your work so much easier. 

Across from your couch, you have a combination device of a radio and phonograph, a beautiful wooden box in a warm caramel colour and with several knobs on its side, topped by the phonograph apparatus to play the corresponding disks and the amplifying horn shaped like a flower. A beautiful and useful piece of machinery that has cost you a pretty penny. You have seen in the phonograph parlors down the road that there are newer models without the amplifying horn, which instead sport a flat netted surface from which the sound emerges. They take up far less space, but the advertorials for them you have seen in the papers also tell you that they are exorbitantly expensive. Besides, you like your flower shaped horn simply for how it looks. 

But of course, the advancement of technology enhanced by magic is even more pronounced outside of your own four walls. Down in the foyer of your building is a small cabin with a magical device called a telephone inside. Pick up the receiver and move close to the speaker, ask the operator to connect you to a certain number, and within a short time you could speak to people miles and miles away! The magic would instantly transmit the words across the continent, although the operator might listen in and urge you to hurry if you spoke for too long. 

A more private solution were letters of course, and these too were helped by new developments in technology. Many post stations were now operating an instant delivery machine. A letter would be placed inside a box, the box closed, and dials on the side of the box would be used to set the destination to the right frequency. Teleportation magic would activate and deliver the letter to the delivery machine in the post station closest to the recipient, from where a postman would bring it to the recipient's house. It could save weeks of time to have letters delivered that way, even if the postage fee was slightly higher than for a regular delivery. 

There is even talk of cabinets that would allow people to step into them and come out of a different cabinet at their destination, thus circumventing the need to accompany a monster to be teleported. Since monsters aren't allowed to leave Ebott except for heavily guarded excursions to build new cores, that would bring the world forwards by several more paces. 

Picture palaces showing the first talkies in addition to the usual reels accompanied by a full orchestra, a person flying across the Atlantic alone in a magically lifted balloon, liquid magic utilised in hospitals to heal all manner of ailments, magical appliances in every household and city - the modern age has truly arrived now that it's 2016. 

You shudder to think where humanity would be without the combination of magic and technology. 

In the dark ages, probably. 

And yet, the monsters suffer from a reputation problem. Cooped up in Ebott as they are and limited in their freedoms while the world raves over their inventions without repaying them in the form of greater political and personal freedoms, they seem to exist in a social system mostly dominated by mafia-like gangs called families, which of course is not helping their reputation. Or at least that's what you keep hearing and reading about them. They are depicted as shady and untrustworthy, with their inventions the only positive thing about them. 

Of course you feel wary about them as well, but you also can't help but think that the negative opinions are somewhat preposterous. Haven't they been peaceful over the past sixty years since the law passed? And even before that, when they lived a quiet and peaceful existence in their Ebott settlement for centuries? It was humans who kept them there and regularly started trouble. Only to then spread all these horrible rumours about them. Why, if you were to manage the reporting a about them… 

You blink at the sudden turn that your thoughts have taken and glance over to your typewriter thoughtfully. 

Huh.

It's an unusual thought for sure. Such a choice would surely cause your mother and faraway friends to worry without end, but it would be an option for employment at least. You would be doing something good with your talents, helping the monsters to be seen in a better light. This might lead to an even closer cooperation and even more technological and social advancements. And on top of that, everyone knows that the monsters pay better than any other employer. Crime money, is what some say. You find it more likely that their magical inventions have simply made the monsters unimaginably rich. The interest they must gain from the banks alone must be enormous!

In spite of what you keep hearing about monsters, you suddenly feel an overwhelming drive to help them. 

You nod to yourself and take a seat at your desk, getting ready to type out your application. You might as well give it a try at least. Whom should you address it to? Human employees in Ebott are always overseen by the King of monsters himself, the head of the Dreemurr family. But on the other hand, a monster named Mettaton is managing the radio station and newspaper release in Ebott. He seems to have gained some popularity in the surrounding areas even; people who manage to receive the Ebott station have described him as a fantastic entertainer, although his cousin Napstablook is the better radio DJ. You have personally read some of Mettaton’s writings when you managed to get your hands on an old copy of the Ebott Gazette a year ago, and you have to agree with the assessment that he knows how to draw people in. Since he is responsible for your area of work, it would make sense to address your application to him as well. 

You will put both the king and the entertainer into the address line, you decide. 

The rhythmical clacking of your typewriter fills your apartment as you write out your letter. You're probably going to pay for a teleport delivery via device; having mail delivered to Ebott in the usual way could take weeks and you don't want to wait that long. Both for financial and for personal reasons.

You hope the monsters will reply quickly.

-

It takes a bit longer than you would have liked, but ultimately you get the confirmation of your new employment after two weeks.

You've used the time to line up any potential services you might need to move out at short notice just in case you get accepted - by the monsters or by other employers you've sent applications to. So you're ready immediately when the confirmation comes. Your employment is unfortunately not considered important enough to warrant accompanied teleportation to Ebott, so you have to take the night train to the city instead. 

On the plus side, the monsters had already bought you a ticket, paid for in full, and so instead of having to stay on one of the cheap and uncomfortable cabins you'd have to share with a stranger, you get a whole small suite to yourself, with all comforts provided. You sleep fantastically on the plush bed even though the gleam of the polished wood and brass detailing distract you a little before. Once you arrive and step out at the station, you look around and immediately spot the fish monster that's supposed to accompany you into the city. It would be hard to miss her, you think, tall as she is and with that bright red hair. 

“Excuse me, but I'm starting my employment here today and I'm supposed to meet with someone called Undyne?” you ask politely when you approach her. 

“That's me,” she confirms, looking you up and down with her single eye while you introduce yourself properly. Her other eye is covered by a patch, but you can see the heavy scarring at the edges anyway. You briefly wonder what happened there, but then decide it doesn't matter. Otherwise she looks as sleek and strong and devilishly elegant as you'd imagine someone with connections to a potential professional crime family. It’s like in the talkies you watched back at home. She wears a suit, with the sleeves rolled up to show her wiry, muscular arms and she simply exudes a rough sort of energetic strength in general. 

Once she's done seizing you up though, she's friendly as she guides you through the gates of Ebott and the obligatory identity check by more monsters, chatting with you about your knowledge about monster tech and your hobbies as she takes a way through the back alleys rather than the main streets. The stream of conversation only stops when she waves for you to follow her into a large mansion deep in the city that intimidates you immensely with how expensive and classy it looks. The inside is even worse; a grand staircase, golden chandeliers, polished wooden floors covered in thick carpets that muffle the sounds of your steps. 

You pass three more points where guards demand to check who you are, doing so both magically and via your ID. Finally, Undyne knocks on a big set of double doors, which open by themselves. 

“Go in,” she tells you with a nod, apparently meaning to stay outside. You square your shoulders and enter the room. 

It's a study with surprisingly modest furnishings. A desk with a single flowering plant on it, two chairs, a bookcase. Another soft carpet. A few pictures on the wall. Everything is relatively straight and devoid of unnecessary ornamentation. It's a startling difference to the rest of the house and allows you to focus all the better on the lone occupant of the room, tall and regal. 

The king of monsters awaits you. 

“A pleasure to meet you,” he says, waving your attempt to bow or curtsey or something like that away. His voice is soft and gentle, a pleasantly high masculine pitch. “I was surprised to receive your letter, but I will gladly accept your offer of help. It feels as though we never have enough human employees.”

The smile he gives you is genuinely kind and hopeful. Unlike Undyne, he seems very different from the slick stereotype that humans have built up about gangsters. You're not sure if he's pretending though - while you do think monsters deserve a chance to prove themselves to the world outside of Ebott, you're not naive enough to think that the rumours of crime are entirely unfounded either. It's a possibility at least, even if they do seem to have have a very gentle and kindly king. 

“Allow me to introduce myself properly,” he continues. “My name is Asriel Dreemurr. I am the head of the Dreemurr family and the King of Monsters.” It's more of a formality of course since you already know who he is, but you go along with it and nod before you introduce yourself again as well. It can't hurt to be polite. “Now, your application indicated that you are interested in working for our newspaper and radio stations in order to achieve a better reputation for monsters among the human population. May I ask what inspired you to take such a step? Many among your kind would view it as very drastic.”

“Well, I simply think it makes no sense that after centuries of being up here again, you’re still confined to this place,” you begin. “Especially not now that the trading restrictions have lifted and your inventions and products have done so much good for the human population. We could all benefit if you were treated more equally in my opinion. Besides, it’s simply a question of fairness, isn’t it? Humans are allowed to visit this city if they apply for a visa, but the same right isn't given to you. The relationship is very one-dimensional and unequal. That seems wrong to me.”

King Asriel keeps looking at you throughout your explanation. His eyes are kind and gentle, but he still manages to have a piercing stare that makes you feel as if he can look straight into your soul and see who you are. You wonder if he can. If you remember your teachings from school right, monsters have the ability to gain some superficial knowledge about someone's character and health by performing a magical “check” on them. It doesn't seem impossible that the king would be able to do more, that he might be more powerful. 

“I see,” he finally says after the silence drags out a bit longer than what's comfortable. “That is a very honourable reason. Well then, let's negotiate your contract.” 

He points you towards the chair opposite the desk and the two of you sit down. The paperwork has already been prepared but the king assures you that it's merely to give the two of you a basis to work from, and that it can be changed if key parts end up being not to your liking. You're very alert and careful throughout the process, wary of unfavourable terms or ambiguous meanings that might leave you in a bad situation. You did a little research before you came here. 

But as hard as you try, you can't spot any signs of deception. The contract reads like a standard employment contract similar to the ones you've always had with human employers - regulations about your work time, some non-disclosure agreements, vacation days, the works. When you ask about it, you're told that a team of human lawyers is advising the monsters in order to ensure their contracts hold up when they deal with humans. In the end, you're rather pleased with the terms you're offered. And with the payment. The rumours about monsters paying generously definitely hold up.

You can't help but feel pleased as you finish up and Undyne brings you to a room in the house that will be yours for the duration of the stay. The monsters so far are nicer than they're said to be, you're finally employed again and your payment will help you save up to live in comfort for a while even after this. 

This is going better than you thought.

-

Living in a house with monsters is interesting.

You're not the only human here, far from it. There are rooms for important guests, contract workers here on a short term basis, and other humans who will be staying long term like you. It’s a number of people high enough that there’s a need to double up on the rooms, especially for the people who will be staying without a time limit. The person you share a room with is a lawyer called Dolores who apparently arrived only shortly before you; she's very straightforward and you get along well, although with the amount of paper needed for both of your jobs, you give it a week before your room will be flooded. Perhaps that’s part of why the two of you are in one room.

There's even a couple of children around in the house, some on a temporary basis until they find a family to be adopted into as the king takes care of all orphans in the city, and one called Frisk who wishes to become an ambassador for the monsters and has moved in permanently for their training. 

But the monsters are a definite majority. 

You meet so many of them during your first two days here that your head starts to swim with names and job descriptions and appearances. Wolf monsters, dogs, cats, fish, reptiles, birds, and those are just the ones resembling animals. Others look like plants or machinery or geometric shapes even more abstract things. The most important one you meet is Mettaton of course, who you will be working closely with. 

“I have to say, it’s not often that I meet a human who actively wants to promote our case,” the robot tells you as he takes you in after you’ve introduced yourself. “Especially not one who works as a… reporter?” 

“Something like that,” you say with a nod, already preparing to explain what else goes into your job. You’re used to giving these explanations; what you do _is_ rather unusual after all. “I did work as a journalist with a newspaper before, but my job goes further than that. I do promotional work on a number of different channels if possible - I have some experience with radio interviews, I engage in photography, I’ve spoken publicly on behalf of my clients. Ideally, I want to create a cohesive story or profile and spread that on as many channels as possible to create a uniformly positive impression of whoever it is that I’m working for. It’s a form of, well, management for public reception and social channels, I would say.” 

Mettaton taps a finger to his chin as he thinks this over. You wait patiently for him to sort his thoughts out and use the opportunity to observe him a bit. Even though you’ve been aware of them all your life, being around monsters every day all of a sudden is a big change. 

They are so human in behaviour, and yet at the same time they’re so different. 

Taking Mettaton as just an example, he is superficially incredibly similar to a human. The same shape, a carefully molded and expressive face, hair, and so on. He has a less human form apparently, but you haven’t seen it yet. Since is job is to represent monsters to humans, it makes sense he appears this way. But at the same time, he is so clearly not human. His skin is made of malleable metal, his arms resemble flexible tubes that bend this way and that, there’s a soft humming and clicking audible whenever he moves. You don’t mind, personally, but you can see how it might unnerve other people. 

“I can work with that, I suppose,” he tells you after a while where you both size each other up. “While I already do something very similar, having an actual human at my side to help might just be the thing we need to get around the preconceptions of your species.”

It’s a rather unkind assessment of humans, and one you have to agree is completely true. 

“I hope so. As long as humans continue to be biased against monsters, having you advocate for your cause alone might not be enough. It’s too easily dismissible,” you add. 

“In that case, would you like to see my work station? We can talk more about our work experiences on the way,” he suggests. 

“Of course. I would love to see what you’ve been doing so far, and with what kind of equipment!” 

You follow him out of the living room where you met him and upstairs, making small talk along the way. Apparently he and his cousin run a second studio from their own home as well, but for the majority of his efforts he works right here in the house. The king apparently likes having the most important employees close, those dealing directly with the outside world, legal matters, overseeing monster businesses and security, and so on. 

Mettaton’s explanations and commentary are concise and polite and helpful, but you can’t help but notice that his attitude towards you fluctuates somewhat. On one hand, he’s really enthusiastic about his work, clearly enjoying what goes into it and the idea of fame and making it big, making a change with his charisma and charm. He quite obviously wants to impress you with his expertise and magnetism, of which he has plenty. 

On the other hand, there’s a tension and underlying distrust and hostility in how he interacts with you. It’s really subtle and not something you think anyone would easily notice, but you can tell. You’ve always had some talent at reading people, and many in your old job distrusted you for doing so many things at once, fearing you’d come for their jobs. So this level of hidden wariness isn’t new to you. 

Unfortunately, you’re not really sure what you could do to relieve his worries. You’re human and you’re pretty sure his reaction to you is based on that, in addition to the exact same worries about you taking away his job. You can do something about the latter, show him that you will trust him to take the lead based on the fact that he worked here longer and has far more experience. Prove to him that you have no interest in fame, that you prefer to stay in the background. 

But the part about being human? That you can’t help. 

You don’t know how to undo centuries of mistreatment by your people, how to ease the bitterness over the fact that only a real human advocating for the monsters might be able to help truly change things.

-

“This… is the m-main laboratory,” Alphys explains.

“It is really impressive,” you say, and although you definitely say it to compliment her, it’s also completely true. 

While her laboratory is in the cellar of the mansion, it still has a light and airy feel to it thanks to the high walls and good lighting. It’s very cluttered with mechanical parts and papers and knick knacks that hint at Alphys’ personality, removing it of how you’d imagine a laboratory to look like. There’s nothing sterile or uncomfortable here, it’s more like a colourful workshop. 

“Th-thanks…” Alphys begins tinkering with one of her gadgets instead of looking at you, but that’s fine. You promised her she could keep working through the interview you wanted to conduct with her, since you heard that she’s very pressed for time. 

As the royal scientist and main inventor of new technology to sell, you can easily see that being the case. She’s basically the main source of legal trade for the whole monster population.

“So, what are you currently working on?” you ask her curiously. 

It should be an easy question and one that makes sense within context; you hope that like this it will feel less like an interview and more like a casual conversation. Never mind the fact that you have a notepad and a pen ready to jot down what she says. 

“O-oh, uhm, well, it’s this shielding technology that works based on soul magic - you know about soul magic? O-of course you d-do, right, ehehe, anyway - it w-works on soul magic in order to repel monsters or humans you don’t want to get too close to you. For example in a fight, you could activate this and nobody would be able to approach you, so you couldn’t get harmed! The basic proof of concept worked, so now I want to refine it and try meddling with the components to see if I can add settings for a radius, so you’d be able to decide how much of a bubble you’d want to put up around you,” Alphys explains, getting faster and losing her stutter as the excitement for her work begins to shine through. 

You can’t help but smile at her obvious enthusiasm. It’s really sweet to see how much she loves her job even with all the pressure it puts on her. Besides, her inventions seriously impress you. 

“That’s a great invention! I imagine it would feel wonderful to have that while walking alone at night and be able to feel safe instead of fearing an attack,” you muse. 

“Well… it d-doesn’t protect you from just anything,” she points out. “Only d-direct attacks at close range… but not pistols for example.”

“Because they have no soul,” you nod, understanding the principle behind the idea. 

“Y-yeah! Exactly! So if it was a shooting or a bomb, there would need to be different shielding, and ideally I would add that once I have refined this, but when I first tried mashing the different kinds of shields together they interfered with each other so I need more testing done before I can think about that,” she rambles. 

“Even without the additional functionality, I think it sounds lovely to have at least one less thing to worry about,” you say. While you keep the small talk up, you’re subtly jotting a few things from the conversation down, just enough to be able to quote it later when you think about how you want to present this to the human public. 

“Yeah, I hope that people will think it’s useful…” Alphys suddenly begins squirming, drawing her shoulders up while the movements of her hands on the machine slow. 

“What’s the matter?” you wonder. 

“Oh, uh, it’s… it’s nothing…” 

You watch her closely, the way she draws in on herself. Even without your finely tuned instincts from having ferreted truths out of people during interviews for years now, you would have noticed something being off here. But you don’t want to scare her away by being too pushy, since you only met her today and you don’t want to give the monsters the impression you’d bully them into telling you what you want to know. You’re here to help them after all, to support them. Not to take over and force your ideas on them. 

So instead of trying to ferret it out, you let it go. 

“Alright. Do you have anything else you’re currently working on or do you only focus on this project right now?” you want to know, thinking for a second about what you know about her job before you add, “provided that’s not classified of course.”

Alphys briefly looks up at you. You can very clearly see that she’s surprised about how easily you moved away from a topic she didn’t want to talk about. 

“Ah, no, I have a c-couple of others t-too,” she tells you. “S-some refinements to the c-core and… maybe a better model for t-telephones…? I’m not sure about th-that one yet. And t-teleportation cabinets, but I c-can’t work on those by myself.”

“I’ve heard about those!” you say with excitement. “So it’s true? Teleportation is _such_ a convenience with the letters already, I can’t even imagine traveling like that!”

Alphys giggles at your overly enthusiastic response and smiles, suddenly appearing a little calmer. Perhaps it helps her to know she’s not the only one to occasionally geek out over new technology. 

“It’s t-true,” she confirms, giggling again when she sees how your eyes widen at that. “In f-fact, the guy who helps me with that p-product line should be c-coming in today… he j-just has some other important b-business to take c-care of first I think. B-but still, he’ll come help out, s-so you’re in luck.” 

“Oh wow, really? And I can stay?”

You can’t believe your luck. Silently, you congratulate yourself for having the best job in the whole world and for having the amazing idea to come here. You make the best life choices. 

“Hehehe, y-yeah! It’s not d-dangerous or secret, so…” 

“I feel like I won the lottery,” you sigh, grinning when Alphys shifts from giggling to laughing out loud. She has a really cute laugh and you’re glad the atmosphere here is so much more relaxed than it was with Mettaton. While you and him managed to set up a workable way to cooperate, you didn’t manage to smooth things out as much with him yet. 

There’s a knock at the door to the lab, causing both of you to look up. 

“That must b-be him… p-pretty punctual today, hehe,” she tells you, before calling out. “C-come in, the d-door’s open!”

The door opens and he walks in. 

You have no idea what you expected. Maybe you didn’t really expect anything. 

But it sure wasn’t this. 

A man walks into the laboratory. A bit on the short side, stocky in stature, almost square. Despite that, his clothes let his shoulders appear broad and strong. A pinstripe suit covers him, somewhat rumpled here and there but clearly of good quality. Leather shoes, black gloves. You can hear the heels of the shoes click with each step. He’s looking down and a hat is pulled deep into his pale face with a card stuck to the band; the ace of spades. He walks in a casual manner, relaxed and easygoing, and yet the tension in his shoulders betrays his awareness of his surroundings, how ready he is to react at the slightest provocation.

You feel yourself flush and immediately admonish yourself for your foolishness. You have no idea who this is and you’d like to think you’re not so superficial to develop an attraction on someone just from seeing them in a nice suit a single time!

The the guy looks up and you feel shocked and even more embarrassed.

His face is not a human one, but shows two empty eye sockets and the rigid grin of a skull. A skeleton. A monster! 

Lights blink to life in the sockets that sharpen until you get the impression that they’re focusing on you, assessing you. It’s the last thing you want, flustered as you currently are, and you can’t help but squirm under the sudden attention. You hope your face doesn’t betray your churning emotions, but you’re aware it’s probably a futile hope. 

“Uhm…” Alphys stutters, looking between the two of you with expression you can’t quite place when you turn to her. “Th-this is the new human employee…”

You quickly introduce yourself when she looks at you expectantly.

“heya. the name’s sans. sans the skeleton,” the monster in the pinstripe suit tells you, holding out his hand for you. His voice is deep and smooth and sends a shudder over your spine. 

No, wait. 

_Oh god._

You feel increasingly awkward when Sans gives you a knowing look from underneath the brim of his hat and you quickly take his hand so as to not leave him hanging. 

PPPPFFFFFFFRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTT. 

…

“What.”

“snnnrrrk.”

“S-sans!! You totally ruined the atmosphere, oh my gosh!”

“i just… hehe… cleared the air a little.”

“I don’t even know what to say.” 

“oooh. silent. the silent ones are the deadliest.”

“Sans, oh m-my gosh.”

You stare at the cackling skeleton with a disbelieving look. He seriously hid a whoopie cushion in his hand and then made fart jokes in the presence of two ladies. How can someone so sharply dressed be so goofy?? 

Well, on the plus side, you’re not embarrassed anymore.

-

“So what exactly do you do here again?” you ask the skeleton who was sent to show you around tonight. You wonder why he asked you to wear something elegant, where he’s going to take you.

You've been here for a couple of weeks now and in spite of a few hiccups you've been enjoying yourself.

Most of the monsters are still so very kind. Far friendlier than even you in your optimism expected, compassionate and mostly cheerful. Almost too much so, especially when a few had their reservations at first. Going around to experience their way of life and then writing about it is a lot of fun, so much so that you sometimes can't believe that this is a job you get paid for instead of just a pleasant hobby. There's a different monster showing you around each day, showing you their job and what they do on an everyday basis. Most of these outings have happened during the daytime, but since Ebott has an active nightlife too you're prepared to stay up late for a story of you have to as well. 

Tonight, it’s Sans’ turn. You’ve seen him in the house a couple of times after your embarrassing first meeting in the laboratory, startling you again and again by appearing seemingly out of nowhere. You’ve maybe tried to avoid him a little bit. Because of the constant teleportation. 

Yeah.

“i run a casino,” he tells you with a grin. He's been grinning at you the entire time since you met him. You're not sure if he's actually in a good mood or if it's because he's a skeleton. You do notice that the edges of his smile can shift though. You wonder if he can close his mouth completely. How much it can move - 

You stop yourself before you pursue that thought further.

“Ah, right,” you nod. "For the tourists?” There's more of those in Ebott than you initially expected, especially in the parts surrounding the train station and city gate. The longer you’re here, the more this point of inequality bothers you, that humans can visit monsters, but not vice versa.

“yup. monsters too, but mostly tourists,” he tells you as he opens the doors to his establishment. 

The building is a small one, the embellishments on the stone facade pretty but a little shabby. It matches the owner, as Sans’ pinstripe suit doesn't sit quite as crisp and snug as it could. Maybe it's the fact that he's a skeleton; you imagine it must be difficult to find properly fitting clothes for a person made of bones. 

The inside of the building is similar. An old red carpet, slightly scratched wood on the walls, cheap plastic seats in front of a couple of pachinko and slot machines. Their clatter almost drowns out the music coming from a radio in the corner. There's small bar in a corner selling simple drinks and prepackaged snacks and a mixture of monsters and humans milling around, keeping mostly separate from each other. It's not as full as you'd expect a gambling parlour to be in the evening. 

Despite that, there's immediately a bit of a ruckus when the two of you walk in. 

“Hey Sans!” 

“Heya Sansy!”

“Sans, my man!”

“Hi Sans!”

The other humans look up in surprise and curiosity while all the monsters greet Sans. It's pretty obvious that while the humans are tourists, the monsters are here often enough to know the owner. He seems to be popular. Watching him, you're not surprised. He has a very easy way of handling the attention, chatting with a monster here and there, dropping a joke, explaining that he's showing you around, asking the monster manning the bar how things are going. Just the right kind of pleasant small talk and humour. He clearly knows what he's doing here, but he doesn't linger. 

Before long, he has taken you into his office in the back, a small room crammed full of bookshelves with neatly labelled folders on them, apparently the paperwork relating to his business. It looks very thorough, there's barely any space left for a desk with a single chair. 

“there we go,” Sans sighs. 

“Aren't we going to look around your establishment more?” you wonder. 

“heh. funny you should ask, considerin’ i haven't shown you my establishment yet,” he says with a wink in your direction. 

When you open your mouth to ask him what he could possibly mean with that, he suddenly reaches one of his thin finger bones between two bookshelves, you hear a click, and the entire thing swings outwards to reveal a dark staircase leading downwards. 

“What the…” you blurt out. 

“c’mon, that's where the real fun is. time ta let ya know what you're really dealin’ with here, hm?” 

He holds out his hand to you. It's your choice, you could turn around and leave. But your curiosity is stronger than your unease at the dark staircase. You've been thinking the monsters seem to good to be true, and now you have the chance to find out what lies underneath. Literally, it seems. If the rumours are true, and how much. Your integrity as a reporter demands that you take this chance. You grasp his hand - 

“Sans.”

“heh. heheheh. yeah?”

“Did you seriously set all of this up just so you could prank me with a whoopie cushion in your hand for the _second_ time?” 

“nah, but the opportunity was so good ‘n i wanted ta see if you'd fall for it again,” he snickers, his entire face practically beaming. At least that answers one question; there is a difference between his usual grin and a true smile. The corners of his eyes are crinkling, however that works. It's very...

You shove the thought aside with a sigh. 

“shall we?”

“Do you actually have anything to show me in your mystery cellar or am I going to end up seeing where you keep your fart cushion stack?” you ask him dryly. 

He laughs out loud at your crude language, allowing you to see his teeth part. The inside of his mouth is strangely empty and dark. 

“why not both?” 

Okay, so maybe the corners of your mouth are twitching a little at that. When he looks at you, he seems pretty satisfied to see you smile. And here you were trying so hard not to fall for his childish pranks and jokes. He finally starts walking down the stairs and you follow him. The hidden door falls shut behind you, but the staircase isn’t dark. There’s a faint glow of magic coming from the walls, just enough to see by, although it’s still dim. The walk downwards takes a good bit longer than you expected. Even without having a clock on you, you can tell that this stairway goes down deep before it evens out into a corridor that ends in a small metal door. It seems heavy when Sans opens it.

“That looks ominous,” you begin to comment only to pause. As Sans opened the metal door, noise begins to pour out of the small room behind it. There’s another door there, larger than the metal one, and made of wood. You can see light shining through the edges when you step closer. “What…” 

The metal door falls shut behind you, Sans opens the next set of doors, and you feel as if you stepped into another world. 

This cellar of the casino is larger than the building above and gives off a completely different impression than what you saw there. It's more like a ballroom than anything else. There's a rich burgundy carpet, old but well taken care of, as if it is steamed and groomed regularly. The walls are covered in wooden boiserie paneling in what might just be mahogany. Columns of a lighter wood line the walls, carved with elaborate geometric designs that are partially covered in gold. The furniture is made from the same light wood and plated gold decorations. There are poker and blackjack tables here, betting stations, lounge corners with sofas and elegant floor pillows, a stage with a live band playing jazz in the corner. The room is packed and noisy, people talking over each other, the clatter of coins and chips, glasses clinking, the music, and one voice rising above all others. 

“MONSTERS AND HUMANS, THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE! MAKE YOUR LAST BETS, MAKE YOUR CHOICE NOW! YES, DEAR GENTLEMAN, YOU CAN BET ON THE RED CARDS ONLY! A MOST SPLENDID CHOICE! AH, A FULL STACK ON A SPECIFIC NUMBER? YOU MUST BE FEELING YOUR LUCK TODAY! BUT WITH A LADY SO BEAUTIFUL AT YOUR SIDE PERHAPS THAT IS NO SURPRISE! WINK! HERE WE ARE WITH ANOTHER ENTRY FROM THE MADEMOISELLE IN THE BLUE DRESS - MAKE YOUR BETS NOW, LAST CHANCE - NO FURTHER BETS? IN THAT CASE… RRRRIIIIEEEN NE VA PLUS! THE GAME IS ON!”

“my brother,” Sans says proudly when he sees you staring. “papyrus.”

Apart from the fact that Sans’ brother is also a skeleton, you’re not sure you would have guessed it. Papyrus is almost twice as tall as his brother based on the way he sticks out of the crowd, and from what you can see of him he’s more gangly and slender too. On the other hand, his suit seems to sit impeccably on his bones. He matches the elegance of this hidden place.

“All of this is…” you stutter out, unable to fully believe it. 

“pretty neat, huh.”

“But… why? Why hide all of this?” you wonder, turning to look at him. It seems like such a shame. 

Instead of answering, Sans leads you through the crowd, grabbing a glass of something probably alcoholic from a waiter passing by. He pulls you to one of the corners with a sofa and many floor pillows, where the monsters and humans sitting there immediately spring up to let him have the sofa all for himself. It seems he is even more well known and respected down here than above. He gets comfy there and pats the space next to him in invitation. You’re not sure what to think of sitting so close to him, but you want answers and so you comply. The sofa is very comfortable. The other customers on the floor pillows all turn away and engage themselves in their own conversations, giving you and Sans some modicum of privacy. 

“see that guy over there?” he says quietly after a moment, pointing at a human in a very elegant ensemble. You have to lean towards him a little to understand him better. “he’s almost five million in debt with me.”

“Five _million_ \- “ you hiss.

“shhh. yeah. pretty hefty, huh.”

“That’s more than just hefty.”

“that’s gambling for ya. askin’ the bank for a loan only ta keep loosin’... well. easy ta rack up a sum like that,” he grins. 

“Why didn’t you cut him off earlier?” you wonder. 

His skull turns to you to fix you with those eye lights, sharp and bright in the gaping darkness of his sockets. 

“cause then how’d he pay me back?” He asks the question in a rumble, a tone so low it seems as though you feel it rather than hear it. When the meaning of his statement slowly sinks in, your eyes widen. 

“That sounds like blackmail,” you whisper, staring back at him, human eyes meeting bright pips of light. 

“sure does. lemme ask ya somethin’. you’ve been here for a while now. you’ve seen what humans think of us ‘n our city before, ‘n now you’ve seen the inside of it. does it seem fair?” he asks you, equally quiet and still fixing your gaze. 

You don’t have to think about that long. The way monsters are forbidden from doing things that humans are allowed to do, the restrictions on where they can live and move, one sided trade deals where your species get all these amazing technological and magical inventions while the monsters don’t get anything equally as worthy back, the negative rumours, the condescension… 

“No. It’s not. That’s why I’m here,” you tell him. 

“right. ‘n i hope that helps. we all do. but,” he replies, “we can’t put our eggs all in one basket. ain’t a good idea to bet on one horse ‘n be done with it. so we have mettaton, ‘n you, ‘n human lawyers tryin’ to work stuff out for us, ‘n the king on diplomatic meetings all the time, ambassadors ‘n whatnot… but we also got this. blackmail. favours. back-alley deals. that guy there, with the five million bucks in debt? knows a senator. guess what i’ll ask him to pay me back with when he wants out ‘n can’t pay in cash. he ain’t gonna borrow that sum from anyone else ta pay me back. not for gamblin’ debts with a monster. much easier ta put in a good word for us where it counts.”

It makes sense. It’s terrible and underhanded and completely in line with the rumours about criminal activity you’ve kept hearing about the monsters all your life, but you understand why they do it. 

You don’t like it, but you can’t criticise it. Now when you’ve seen more and more how much injustice happens everyday between humans and monsters. 

“I see. I suppose that’s necessary, all things considered.”

“takin’ this pretty well.” 

“I’ve seen how you’re treated, and I’m human too. I’m not sure it’s for me to judge your way of dealing with this situation,” you explain. 

“welp, glad to hear it. would’ve been bad if you’d tried to rat us out now,” he chuckles. 

“What would that mean for me?” you want to know, suddenly feeling disturbed. 

“don’t look at me like that, wouldn’t hurt a pretty face like yours,” he promises you with a sharp grin that makes you flush. 

You suddenly notice how close your faces are, how much you’ve leaned towards each other due to your whispered conversation. It’s improper, you should pull back.

“I…” 

“no, seriously, you signed a non-disclosure agreement, it’d just be a legal hassle. if ya want out, all you gotta do is promise not to rat us out ‘n stick to it, ‘n then it’s fine,” Sans reassures you, apparently misunderstanding your sudden worry. 

“I’m… yes. That’s… that’s good.” 

You can’t believe yourself. You heard what could be construed as a threat against you and your only thoughts were about your attraction to this monster. Even more embarrassment flushes your face, and this time the shift in how Sans looks at you tells you that he finally understands what’s going on. Oh no. 

“I shouldn’t - “ you begin in a desperate and very late attempt to save face. 

“ain’t nobody here who cares about that, sweetheart,” Sans interrupts you with a mumble, his face still oh-so-close to yours, the smooth bone gleaming with something almost like a fine rainbow sheen. 

You don’t want to acknowledge what he means, but you know it’s true even before you glance to the side to take another look at the room. You’re far from the only human here sitting way too close to a monster. Some are even holding hands, caressing their fingers and arms, almost kissing. In human society, this would be scandalous and indecent, but here, nobody seems to be batting an eye. 

“your choice,” you hear that delicious rumble against your ear. 

You know it would be. You do believe him when he says nobody would harm you if you decided this criminality is too much for you, that you wouldn’t be pressured. 

Anything you do from here on is solely your decision. Based only on what you want. 

Slowly, you lean even closer to him, until your foreheads begin to touch and you can feel his breath on your lips. 

The promising grin you get in return is already more than worth it.


	5. Mobtale 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part of Mobtale, as voted for! I'm sorry this was late, I'm currently doing a lot of restructuring on my blog so I had a little less time to write. I hope you enjoy it regardless!
> 
> If you want to influence what I write next, be sure to check out [my Tumblr](https://rehlia.tumblr.com/)!

“The last broadcast was successful enough I suppose, but I'd like to do more about this topic,” Mettaton states, thoughtfully tapping his fingers against his rectangular screen. 

It's one of the rare moments where he isn't in his humanoid body, since he used up a bit too much energy during his latest show. Now he needs to rest so his batteries can recharge. This boxy form is apparently a lot more energy efficient. 

“I was thinking the same thing,” you nod. “It seemed we reached a wider audience this time and the integration of images, your broadcast and the article we penned together made a deeper impact from what I could tell.”

“It is lovely to see that your cooperation is netting us some positive press. I did not expect human reporters to want to work with you so quickly,” Asriel says, looking over the papers you and Mettaton he given him that summarise the recent successes of your cooperation. There are quite few of them - a cause for celebration for sure, albeit still not a fully happy one. That a human advocating for monsters can make so much of a difference in such a short amount of time where a monster alone couldn't is still bitter to swallow.

Things between you and Mettaton are okay, although you still notice his subdued anger over how differently you are treated in comparison to him sometimes. 

You try to be as understanding as possible. It is a sad situation after all. 

“If the reporters want to work with them, does that mean they will come here?” Frisk asks. They've been sitting in on this meeting quietly so far. This is the first time they speak up. 

“Probably. I doubt they would let us monsters leave Ebott just for some interviews,” Mettaton sighs. 

Frisk only nods, their expression as calm and placid as ever. You've never seen them emote a lot. They always wear the same expression, eyes half closed and their mouth set into a single line. It's easy to assume they look lazy or tired for somebody who doesn't know them, but you've seen them around often enough by now to recognise it as an expression of utter focus instead. 

You often wonder what it could be that they need to concentrate on so much. 

“In that case we should prepare accordingly,” Asriel decides. “Welcome them with our own brand of hospitality.”

It almost sounds like a threat in light of what you recently learned about monsters from Sans, but your concerns lower a lot when Mettaton perks up at that and excitedly begins gushing before you can ask about it. 

“A party? Oh, how wonderful! We haven't had a party in so long, will we make it a big one? Not too formal I hope! The last reception of that one politician - what was his name again? Tramples? An awful character - was so dreadfully boring!” Mettaton declares, the flourish and energy he shows during his shows returning to his voice. He loves things like these, the idea of glamour and presenting himself to a crowd, the socialising, the opportunities. 

“I do think we can take a more relaxed approach,” Asriel tells him with a smile. “Since these are reporters and not politicians. As long as we maintain certain standards of good taste.”

“Of course!” Mettaton gasps, his tone indicating that he finds the very idea that those standards might not be met in his presence insulting. “We do have to make a good impression still.”

“Can I also come to the party?” Frisk asks, looking between the three of you. There's something unusual in their tone, as if they aren't even wondering about the reply. 

“I think you can attend for a little bit,” Asriel tells them in a similar tone. Frisk nods. 

You try not to be obvious about it, but internally you're wondering about them. Ever since Sans informed you about the various deceptions and hidden agendas in Ebott, you've paid a lot more attention to any unusual happenings around you. And this exchange definitely has your senses tingling. 

Frisk doesn't sound as if they're asking for permission. They sound as if they already know they will attend, and are merely… what? Pretending they need permission in the first place? Who are they pretending for? Mettaton as well or just you? 

Similarly, Asriel doesn't sound as if he's actually making decisions about their attendance and the length of it. It's more that he's conforming something he already knew about. 

Something they may have arranged previously? That's guesswork on your part. But one thing is clear: They're performing a script and you don't know why arranged and for what purpose. 

You're not sure if this is something you should bring up, and before you get the opportunity Asriel concludes the meeting with the statement that planning the party will have to happen at another time since he has another meeting coming up now. You don't dare to ask Mettaton about it. 

You wonder if Sans can tell you. 

If he would.

-

The kitchen is spacious, gorgeous, and in the process of being utterly trashed. You can’t help but wince occasionally, even though you’ve been told it’s okay. The king doesn’t mind, as long as the mess will be cleaned up after. And no tomato sauce on the ceilings. And absolutely no fire.

That last part concerns you. 

Especially now that you're seeing them in action. 

“Harder! Do you want to smash those vegetables or not?! They're the enemy! They're the law we hate! They're what's standing between everyone's hopes and dreams! _Destroy them_!!” Undyne shouts, pointing a sharp claw at the poor vegetables in question while fixing her sole eye on you with an accusatory glare. 

“I normally just chop them - “ You try to explain again. 

Undyne stares again you for another second and then turns and swings her arm to punch the vegetables. Actually punches them. With her whole fist. Even the automatic flinch that runs through your body at the sudden motion and sound can't protect you from the bits of onion and tomato that fly all over the place. Now Sans’ smirking hint that you should wear something old and ratty for this “friendship cookout” as Papyrus called it makes a lot more sense. 

Papyrus had insisted that the two of you should get to know each other better, for reasons, wink. He had actually said wink, out loud. You expected to get the shovel talk or something of the sort from him now that you and Sans have made your growing interest in each other clear but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Papyrus invited you to one of his spaghetti cooking sessions with his friend Undyne. You hadn't even known that they're friends before today, though you have to say they're a good fit. They're both equally enthusiastic over the smallest things in life and both have a tendency to get loud, although Papyrus more so. You wonder if it's a quirk that carries over from his job or if it's a quirk he uses to be successful at his job. They can both be great at cheering people on, and both have a similarly wacky way of doing so. 

They both have questionable ideas about cooking. 

“So… You punch the vegetables,” you say. It's the most diplomatic thing you can think of. You don't want to insult them or their methods. At least not out loud. Even if you consider them your friends they're still very much criminals with a bit of a thing against humans after all. 

“Yeah!! First you mash ‘em, then you cook ‘em!” Undyne declares, her enthusiasm as wild as her toothy expression. 

“DON'T WORRY HUMAN! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, USED TO BE JUST AS CLUELESS ABOUT THE MYSTERIES OF FOOD PREPARATION! BUT WITH A BIT OF EFFORT, YOU TOO CAN ACHIEVE MY LEVEL OF PROFICIENCY! OR AT LEAST SOMETHING CLOSE, NYEH HEH HEH!” Papyrus adds, having just thrown the spaghetti into a large pot of violently bubbling water, carton included. 

You stare at the slowly disintegrating carton flecks and desperately try to come up with a way to save this. 

“Of course. It's just that the recipe I was taught by my mother is very different. So this is very unusual to me,” you carefully begin. “So far, monster cuisine hasn't strayed quite so much from what I know - “

“Then that's all the more reason to try it now,” Undyne says. She puts an arm around you and squeezes you uncomfortably tight. It almost hurts. Her grin grows sharp. “ _Right_?”

Well shit. 

You walked into that one all by yourself. 

You can't help but glance over at where Sans is lounging in one of the chairs at the long kitchen table, an untouched chopping board and knife in front of him. Your eyes plea for him to help you. He's pretending to be asleep. 

“Right,” you press put when it becomes clear that no help will be forthcoming and Undyne’s claws are threatening to puncture the fabric of your shirt where she's grabbing your shoulder. 

Miserably, you watch as the water with the spaghetti-and-carton in it turns a murky grey. A second pot is set on the stove next to the first, and the mashed vegetables - clumpy, uneven, unpeeled - are unceremoniously dumped in. Without any cooking oil or other sort of fat. The faint stench of something burning black soon makes it into your nostrils. You pity whoever will have to clean out that beautiful metal pot. You hope it won't be you. 

They do eventually add some water and more tomatoes into the second pot for a sauce. No salt though. No other spices either. 

What are you getting into?!

Predictably, the result looks horrifying when it's poured onto your plate. The noodles are overcooked, slimy and have soggy cardboard pieces all over them. The sauce is runny, black and brown, with chunky and mushy vegetable bits and peelings in it, all reduced to basically charcoal. Just looking at it makes you feel faintly nauseous. But everyone else is staring at you as soon as you sit down at the table, even Sans. They're clearly expecting you to take a bite. To eat. 

You stare at Sans again, hoping he will catch your meaning from your expression this time. 

His expression as he looks back at you is completely calm, expectant and curious as he waits for you to lift your fork. 

No luck here it seems.

Papyrus and Undyne also keep staring. 

Oh man. 

What are you going to do? You don't want to eat this. You don't even want to exist in the same room as this plate and its contents. It stinks, of burnt plant matter and water that's turned off. You have to tell them. You have to tell these three shrewd, wary, blackmailing, doing who knows what else mob monsters who have some issues with humans that you don't want their self-made food. After one of them very strongly implied that declining to participate would be a slight. Who knows. Maybe they have this as part of their cuisine because of the hardships they endured because of your species. Like war time cuisine or something. Of course that would make it highly insulting for you as a human to decline it. But then if you do eat this you really think you might get sick and wouldn't that be worse?

You take a deep breath.

“I, uhm.” Okay, good start. “I think that, uh, this… I mean. It's very.”

Undyne suddenly begins to snort. 

“Really? And here you are our representative. Where have your words gone?” she cackles. 

“UNDYNE, DON’T BE TOO HARSH ON HER! SHE TRIED VERY HARD!” Papyrus admonishes her, before giving you an encouraging look. “DON’T WORRY, YOU DID VERY WELL FOR THE FIRST TIME!”

“really? i thought that was pretty hilarious as a first attempt,” Sans snickers. 

“What on earth is going on?” you ask them with a frown. Did they just do this to make fun of you? Seriously?! 

“It’s a test,” Undyne says, still snickering between some of her words. “And a lesson. Oh man, your face was priceless!”

“AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T EAT IT!” Papyrus insists. 

“Well, yeah, that’s true!” Undyne finally stops laughing and gives you a proud look. “Could’ve been worse!” 

“it’s about safety,” Sans explains when you stare at him in hopes of finally getting a hint of what’s going on. You’re glad he does, you felt uncomfortable with the others laughing at you. “there’s been situations where we’ve been offered food at official functions where it would be rude ta decline outright but we noticed something off. so we train new people ‘bout how they can say no for their own safety without insulting anyone.”

“Oh. You mean it was… poisoned?” you ask, the idea shocking you. You know that the relations between humans and monsters are relatively bad of course, but you had no idea something like this was going on - and frequently enough for the monsters to have a whole safety training thing for it. 

“for example,” Sans nods. “paps ‘n i, we can’t eat human food at all, ‘s gotta be monster stuff for us. so we have a good reason to decline. but the others can eat it so they gotta be careful when humans offer them shit. now that you work for us ‘n so publicly, we thought we should teach ya. with the party comin’ up and all that.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a tradition to try and trick the newbies when it’s their first time,” Undyne shrugs. “It’s good to see their natural reactions too. I have to agree with Papyrus, it’s promising you didn’t eat this at least even though we have to work on your evasion tactics.”

You can’t help but squirm in your seat when you hear this explanation. Being poisoned as a result of your work is something you never considered when you took this job. The others are looking at you silently, obviously waiting to see how you will react to this bit of news. Despite your initial fears though, you’re quickly overcome by anger, then rage. 

Not at them, but at the humans who force them to develop tactics like this. 

They have to keep living like this, knowing that any time they have a conference or meeting with humans they might be threatened. Even at a party, where they should be able to relax and have fun they have to keep their defences up. This is so wrong. It’s horribly, terribly unjust and messed up that they have to live like this, not just caged in a city they founded as a symbol of their freedom but having to fear for their very lives so frequently. 

You can feel something inside you shift, a part of you coming to the forefront that you frequently use to achieve your goals, but that you haven’t ever felt so strongly in your life. Your mother called it stubbornness, willfulness, and any number of similar names. And that’s accurate in a way, but there’s more to it. You’re not just digging your heels in. You’re not just deciding that enough is enough. 

“Okay. Teach me how to do better,” you say to the three monsters watching you, your voice set and strong. 

You’re filled with determination.

-

The conference with the journalists was a success and the interviews you, Mettaton, Asriel and Frisk conducted with them went well in your opinion. The questions that were asked weren’t misleading and the answers you all gave to them don’t have much potential to be taken out of context and twisted into something else either. A rarity in your line of work for sure, but then the four of you prepared very diligently for this.

Asriel as the wise and kindly king who only wants peace and prosperity for his people, Frisk as the endearing child who found a happy home in the unlikeliest of places, Mettaton as the charming and magnetic host with just the right amount of flair for this, and you as the new mediator between human and monster viewpoints. 

It’s a constellation that you think has potential. 

Of course the journalists will have to go over the material first, cut it, freshen it up, and then see what the prospects for distribution are like in local and national picture palaces. That’s gonna take a couple of days at least, perhaps even a week if you include shipping to more far off places. Still, once the interview is on the screen you think it will have a measurable effect and you can’t wait to track it. 

Despite your excitement, you try to push the thought away and focus on the here and now instead. Being distracted by work during a party would be such a shame after all and it’s just about to start. Besides, you training with regards to food and some other hints that Undyne, Papyrus and Sans have given you demand that you pay attention as well. 

So you straighten your shoulders and take one last look at yourself in the mirror. 

Your hair is pinned close to your head and slicked down into waves, covered by a hairband with a small feather at the side to match the latest fashion. Your makeup is dramatic enough to match the occasion but not too overdone for your face. The dress you chose is covered in beadwork creating geometric patterns running down your front, back and sides, overlapping intricately and stretching out your silhouette. The skirt of it is daringly cut to barely reach the knees, sheer fabric and tassels giving a peek at the joints of them. Matte stockings and a pair of shoes with more beads stitched onto them complete your outfit. 

You haven't felt this elegant in a long while, but it's a feeling you enjoy right now. It's hard to stop turning in front of the mirror and admiring your outfit. 

“Ready to go?” Dolores asks you. 

Unlike you, she has opted to go with a more masculine look, a black suit and a bow tie on a white shirt. The shirt is tight, but the suit pants and blazer are more loosely fit. Her hair is also slicked back, making her sharp features and intelligent eyes stand out more. You think it's no wonder she gets along so well with Undyne, they seem to have very similar tastes. 

“Ready,” you confirm. 

The two of you make your way out of your shared room and down the stairs together. The party is held in the back of the mansion in one of the large ballrooms. It's lucky that Asriel planned the occasion to be larger already, since two local politicians announced that they want to attend the party too after having heard about it from the reporters beforehand. It's on short notice, but you think they'll be impressed regardless. There's going to be a buffet, a live band, enough space to dance next to the dinner tables, and some demonstrations of new developments in monster magic and technology exclusively for the journalists, the politicians, and their spouses and children. A lot of monsters and humans from Ebott have been invited to attend in order to create opportunities for networking. You've heard that the journalists may have something planned too, but nobody knows what yet. 

That reminds you of something. 

“Did Undyne prepare you for the food too?” you ask Dolores while you walk through the corridor. 

“Of course. I have been here for a while already, after all,” she replies calmly with a glance over at you. “It's a shock at first, isn't it?” 

“It is,” you sigh. “In spite of everything going on, it's simply not something I expected to deal with when I came here.”

“Neither did I at first,” she nods, looking back to where she's going. “Nobody wants to assume the worst, or if they do it can be hard to imagine what the worst might look like.”

“Yes, that's a good way to put it. It's terrible to think that they had to deal with this kind of stuff all this time,” you say with a nod ahead from where you can already hear the partying monsters. “Even though they're remarkably calm about it.”

“Apart from the fact that they became… well, you know.” Dolores pointedly looks at the luxurious mansion you go through. It seems she doesn't want to say it out loud just in case anyone from the outside might be listening from some unseen corner, but you know what she means anyway. 

Crooks and gangsters. 

That's what they became. 

All because of the humans, who in turn shun them for it. 

“Yeah. Apart from that.” 

Dolores’ lips quirk up into a brief smile, one that’s hardened by the fact that her eyes don’t share it. The two of you are on the same page when it comes to this it seems. You can’t help but feel your fondness for her grow a little. She’s like you, having come here to help only to get enraged over the injustices she encountered. Not that that’s something you can afford to think much about right now.

You've arrived at the large doors to the ballroom. Time to celebrate. You take a deep breath to push the bitterness of what you just discussed with Dolores away. Is this how Mettaton feels all the time? No wonder he's so salty. Dolores opens the door while you collect yourself, and the two of you step into a whirlwind of elegance and luxury. 

Asriel spared no expense it seems. 

The room itself is already grand, with beautiful and polished stone tiles, high ceilings decorated with stucco figurines and windows that span the entirety of the north wall from the ceiling to the floor, allowing the guests a beautiful view over the rooftops of the city, with Mount Ebott visible in the background. The colours are mostly soft creams and various shades of beige and gold, an understated and classical aesthetic. The buffet is on the left, delicacies piled high on a variety of tiered serving trays and platters, with markers on which ones are monster and which human food. There are many round tables close to the buffet, with six chairs surrounding each one, where guests can sit and eat. The stage for the live band is to the right, and they're already playing although only a few monsters are dancing on the free dance floor just in front of them. 

“Not bad,” you comment. 

“It’s your first official party here, isn’t it?” Dolores asks you curiously, only continuing when you nod. “In that case, I feel the need to inform you that the amount of fun we get to have is directly related to how drunk the human visitors get.”

You feel your eyebrows raise a little as you turn that over in your head. 

“Because the more drunk they are, the less they’ll remember?” you guess. 

Dolores doesn’t reply out loud, but the grin on her face rivals some of Undyne’s best efforts, managing to be just as sharp and shark-like even though Dolores unlike Undyne lacks all of the second and third rows of teeth.

You feel a smile of your own spread on your face when you glance over to the buffet and notice that the alcohol is already present, stashed in the back. You know there’s gonna be a toast to start things off once everyone is there, and you suppose after that the many waiters that are already bustling about the room will do their part to ensure that certain people’s glasses will remain well-filled. 

The promise of that makes it a lot easier to sit through the more boring parts of the party. You are seated between Mettaton and one of the journalists, his wife and two children taking the other seats at the table. There’s a lot of polite talk and fake laughing about jokes that aren’t actually very funny, which makes you miss Sans a lot. He is invited, but he’s been seated at a different table with Papyrus. It’s probably for the better because otherwise you might stare at him for the entire time, but still. 

As soon as you've all finished eating and it's polite to do so, you get up and excuse yourself to the dancefloor. One of the journalists looks like he wants to follow you, seeming tipsy or even drunk from his wine, but a sour look by his wife reigns him back in. Thank the heavens. You actually give her a thankful nod, which seems to both surprise and anger her. Pffff. Smiling to yourself, you leave the table. It seems as though other guests had a similar idea, as the dancefloor is already getting crowded by the time you manage to wind your way past all the other tables. 

A good portion of the people dancing here seem to be affected by their drinks already, the humans more so than the monsters. Personally, you held back because you're too worried about Undyne’s warnings with regards to the food. You already had the journalist who wanted to follow you gift you a box of expensive chocolates, which you politely declined to try in front of him, stating that you're full from the buffet. The buffet food in turn was watched by monsters the entire time, and you only ate whatever had been prepared in this very house, marked with the sigil of the kingdom - nothing from outside. Rather stressful, for such a boring dinner. 

Desperate to get rid of some of the tension, you don't even wait to be invited to dance with someone, instead opting to dance by yourself for a little bit. The pace of the piece currently played is faster and not terribly suited for coupled dances in any case, so you're not the only one. Not that a few people don’t try. You spot Dolores shaking her limbs in the company of an elegant monster with six arms and five eyes, faintly reminiscent of a spider. Grillby is doing a fast number with an unknown bunny monster. Shaking your limbs out in a loud crowd feels good after the stiff, uncomfortable dinner. It relaxes you after makes you feel more like yourself again. 

You even begin to smile after a while, no longer paying that much attention to whether or not you're following the proper dance steps. You're just having fun. 

“enjoying yourself?” a low voice whispers against your ear from behind you. 

You flinch and nearly stumble from the surprise, but you aren’t angry. 

“Sans! Don't scare me like that,” you scold him with a breathless laugh. 

“jus’ askin’ a question,” he chuckles. You catch him with a devious grin when you turn around to him. He totally knew what effect his sudden whispering from behind would have. Dick. “wanna dance?”

“I thought I was already doing that.” Your tone is airy and teasing. 

“aw. rebuffed already. breakin’ my heart over here.”

“Do… you have one? I mean, what is your anatomy even like?” you ask him, suddenly curious. You learned in school that monsters are made of magic, and that their bodies are merely hardened light projected from their soul. Something that looks and feels solid, but doesn’t actually have any mass. It’s just… how far does that go? Does their magic imitate all organs and function a human body has? Most monsters can eat human food after all, so there must be something there. But Sans said he couldn’t. So you think it makes sense to ask what exactly his anatomy looks like.

Although… he's giving you a certain grin. 

Wow, that’s a suggestive question, now that you thought about it. 

In front of you, Sans is quietly snickering while your face begins to feel warm.

“i get a feeling you're askin’ something else there, sweetheart,” he tells you with a waggle of his brow bones. 

“I am absolutely not!” you protest. 

“nah, i ain't got a heart,” he tells you, still giving off the impression that he knows just where your thoughts might have went there. “or a brain, or... whatever else it is that makes your human bodies tick. just a soul and some bones.”

“I see. Thank you for indulging my curiosity,” you say as politely as you can. 

Don't look down, you tell yourself. Don't give him the satisfaction of looking down now. You're not wondering about the presence of _that_ part of his anatomy. 

“sure thing. i don't mind,” he practically purrs, making a brief pause in which he looks down, very deliberately, to drag his eye lights over your body, “indulging you.”

You nearly choke on your own breath. Despite everything, you still can't help but glance to your sides, checking if anyone noticed. There are people here who don't frequent Sans’ casino, people from outside of Ebott, and you don't want to cause a scandal at this party. Even if a lot of people here are well on their way to being drunk, they're not drunk enough yet to ignore a monster and a human doing more than just politely dancing. 

Nobody's directly staring at you, but you do notice that some people are noticing you and Sans because you're just standing on the dancefloor instead of dancing like everyone else. 

He seems to be noticing it too because he begins swaying a little, just enough to pass it off as dancing. You do the same and like that, you move with the masses for a while at a polite distance, waiting until the attention on you shifts elsewhere. 

As soon as you're not the focus anymore, Sans begins moving towards the edge of the dancefloor, slowly and casually, as if his dance steps just happen to take him there. You follow him in what you hope to be a similarly casual way, curious to see what he's up to. Getting away after that is harder because there are less bodies to hide your movements, but you manage. Not long and you're outside of the ballroom, turning into an empty side corridor. 

“looks decent enough,” Sans decides after looking around for a bit. 

“For what?” you really want to know now. He doesn't often put a lot of visible effort into anything. Unfortunately, realising how unusual this is for him immediately throws your mind back to Undyne’s training. “Is something the matter? The food? The humans?”

“what? nah, i uh.” He suddenly looks slightly flustered. Caught off guard. “just noticed you looked bored during the dinner ‘n then after we couldn't talk on the dancefloor just now i thought we could be alone for a bit.” 

He gives you a sheepish shrug and you feel a smirk spread on your face, the feelings of amusement and flattered delight that bubble up inside you clearly showing on your face. 

“shut up.”

“I didn't even say anything!” you protest with a laugh. 

“your face did,” he insists, which, yeah. It probably did. Especially to someone as observant as him. 

“Okay, fair enough,” you decide, still unable to fully stop grinning. 

“besides. you're lookin’ mighty happy about it,” he points out. He looks rather pleased about that, almost smug in his satisfaction over seeing you happy that he wants to spend time alone with you. 

“I sure do,” you state as confidently as you can, determined not to give him an inch in this sudden game of who's less affected by the flirting. “How could I not, when you're so accommodating to my questions and wishes.” 

“like i said,” he says, dropping his voice into a low, smooth rumble. “i don't mind _indulging_ you.”

His deep tones send a rush of heat through you, one that you know for sure is showing on your face, and you scramble for a reply so hard that you overthink it and come up with nothing. It's a second of silence too long and just like that, you lost the little game between the two of you. 

Sans laughs quietly at you as you work your mouth, nothing coming out. He steps closer to you, his eye lights searching your face for permission before he touches his forehead to yours and leans in for a nuzzle, a gesture of affection he has already shared with you before. That's how monsters without lips kiss, you've learned, and it's a pleasantly intimate feeling. 

The sudden lick against your lips however. 

That's new. 

Your mouth opens out of sheer surprise and he uses the opportunity immediately, flicking the tip of his tongue against the roof of your mouth and the back of your teeth before he tangles it with your tongue, kissing you deeply in a mess of heated breath and roaming hands before he draws back again. 

The two of you are staring at each other. His eye lights are blown wide, fuzzy at the edges. It's cute. You wonder what you look like. Your eyes drop down and you see a shimmer of blue behind his parted teeth, a shining, partially translucent tongue sitting there in the same colour as his magic. 

“I didn't know you could do that,” you murmur, feeling breathless and a little lightheaded. This maybe answers your earlier questions about certain parts of his anatomy. His sockets narrow and the grin he gives you in return is positively fiendish. 

“i can do lot mo -”

His voice is drowned out by a sound like thunder, a burst of noise and cracking wood and splintering glass. 

The ground shakes and sends you stumbling forwards, against Sans who has just as much trouble finding his footing. Both of you smack against the opposite wall, a low crack audible followed by a grunt of pain by Sans. Your own fall is barely cushioned by him, although you're sure you'll bruise from the hardness of his bones. 

For just a second it’s as if the world is holding its breath.

Then you hear screams from behind you, from the ballroom. 

It smells like smoke. 

“Shit, Sans are you hurt?!” 

It's the first thing you ask in spite of everything, the crack asked his little painful sound somehow occupying a larger space in your mind than anything else. 

You're perhaps not ready to think about the other sounds. 

“no, never mind, we… “ He checks you briefly for injuries before he pushes you away abruptly, and you see the naked fear on his face. He immediately turns away, towards where you came from. “paps.”

And he runs. 

You follow him without thinking, the horrifying reality of what those noises meant suddenly bathing your heart in ice like fear. 

Was it a big bomb or a large one?

Who did they get with it?

How many hurt?

How many…?

The ballroom is a mess of fire and black smoke and people running away from the scene in panic. You have trouble fighting your way through, you can't see Sans. You want to follow him even though you know you won't be able to do much, you're screaming for him, shouting at people to tell you if they've seen Asriel or Frisk or Dolores or Mettaton or Papyrus or _anyone_ but nobody is listening to you. 

Aquatic monsters with water based magic come to fight the fire while other monster volunteers drag you away from the scene. Away from the danger. You're brought to a different building together with others, questioned about what you know, your status as an employee not protecting you from being suspected. In the end, you're only a human. And you're treated like one. You don't know what to tell them. The truth isn't what they want to hear, they keep asking and asking you about things you have no clue about. If you've seen something. If you helped. Who did you sell information to. And nobody will tell you if your friends are even still alive. 

It takes _three days_ before king Asriel personally comes to let you out of the cell the monster guard has put you in. You're glad to see him, and that you get out, but his grave expression tells you that this still isn't a happy occasion. 

You attend the first funeral on the same afternoon.


	6. Dancetale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long, but here is the Dancetale chapter! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I actually know very little/next to nothing about dancing x,D I tried my best to describe it all well and correctly, but please go easy on me haha!
> 
> Also, I used the videos provided on the Dancetale AU wiki entry as reference for the dances of the different monsters, but I used some new ones too:  
> [Dolores and Undyne dance this choreography together](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNxKfAFlJyA)  
> [Sans and Reader dance to this remix ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2WWxFVyR-4)  
> [This is the dance Sans does during that scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpLGZ4tcavI&feature=youtu.be&t=3m51s)  
> [And this is Reader's ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCXGJQYZ9JA)  
> I mean, you're obviously welcome to imagine some other choreography if you want! But these are the ones I used while writing this :3
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!
> 
> [You can regularly vote which story I should update next on my Tumblr!](https://rehlia.tumblr.com/)!

You've never seen anyone this big. 

You thought the monsters were big and then you met Undyne, and then Undyne briefly became your yardstick for “tallest person you have ever met,” and _then_ you were introduced to Asgore. 

It's a good thing he looks so gentle and friendly, because the top of your head manages to reach up to his belly just under his chest, maybe. You feel tiny in his presence. 

“It is nice to meet you,” he tells you in the deep, bassy rumble you already heard from him when you saw the monsters for the first time on TV. In person, you swear you can feel the vibrations of his voice from the top of your head all the way through your feet. “You are here to represent us to your fellow humans, correct? Would you do me the honour of a dance?”

Ah, right. You vaguely remember that being mentioned on TV, although the memory is hazy from the alcohol. Monsters dance. You didn't expect them to want to dance with _you_ though.

“I, uh… I'm not a good dancer…” you try, by which you mean that you have zero experience with anything that isn't vaguely swaying your body along some simple music with a blatantly noticeable rhythm. 

“That is quite alright,” Asgore tells you with a patient smile. “For many monsters it has become instinctual, but I too had to learn. I can teach you the basics of how we monsters dance. It will be dark and quiet at first, but I promise you have nothing to fear.”

Well, it's not as if you can say no to a king - and your future employer - when he puts it like that. 

You take the hand he offers you and nod, and as soon as you do you feel a tug at your chest and the world around you sinks into utter darkness. You can't hear the people and monsters around you anymore. Just like he said. Asgore shifts in colour into a bright white, outlined as if he was drawn in nothing but illumination. You can't see your own body, can in fact barely feel it. Instead, a deep green heart is floating at the height of your chest, reminding you of the tint of a bottle or fern in a verdant forest. 

“This is your soul,” Asgore explains to you. “The core of everything you are. It is outside your body now while you are in the encounter with me, but do not worry. You are safe, and this is only so we can understand each other better. Through your soul, the magic inherent in our shared dance can resonate.”

“Where's your soul?” you ask curiously, still staring at the green heart that he described as the culmination of your being. There's a sense of vulnerability if you focus on it, something exposed that normally should be secret and hidden, but true to Asgore’s words you do feel safe even with it outside. 

“Since monsters Asgore are made of magic and our connection to our souls is stronger, we do not need to have them outside in an encounter,” he replies. “Now, are you ready? You will understand much better what I mean once we dance.”

“Yeah, sure.” In truth, you still feel a little insecure. But you came here to help and you knew beforehand that having to deal with magical monsters and everything that came with them might be strange or even risky, so you try your best to push your insecurity aside. This, this dancing thing, is about communication and understanding - and that's what you're here for. That's what you _do_. As a social media manager and also in general, you always try to connect to people, or to foster connections between others. 

“You begin by taking a step forwards with your left foot,” Asgore begins. “Bend your leg and land softly. The movement should feel light and airy… yes, like that. See how I am moving with you? Now, follow with the right, until they are parallel and a hips width apart…”

He guides you slowly through the movements while you keep staring down at your feet, trying not to step on his big fuzzy paws. The basic patterns seems to be only four steps, thankfully, you're not sure if you could have kept up with more right at the start. Asgore also doesn't change or vary the pattern, instead choosing to repeat these four simple steps in exactly the same way over and over again. After a while, you feel that the movement has become automatic for you and you dare to look away from your feet, up at his face instead. 

You are met with a kind, happy expression that makes his eyes shine with warmth. 

“There you go,” he says. “You are finding your first rhythm.” He seems genuinely enthusiastic about that, as if you just accomplished something great. 

“Uhm, yeah, sorry for taking a while,” you reply with a nervous laugh. You're pretty sure you don't actually deserve any praise here, seeing that you're painfully slow and careful with your steps still. 

“Everyone has their own pace,” Asgore tells you. “The important part is that you are dancing. Can you feel it?” 

“Feel…?” 

The question gives you pause. You've been so focused on the dance steps that you didn't really pay attention to anything else anymore. Now though, the steps don't take up so much of your attention anymore, and you feel… 

Something. 

Like a vibration that tickles the very edge of your perception, a sense you weren't aware of. As if your chest is prickling, the space where your soul finds its home when it's not outside your body. Feeling, hearing, sensing with your soul, easily picking up on that in the darkness of the encounter now that Asgore isn't speaking. Listening into the silence, and recognising that the silence isn't one at all. 

At the very edge of your perception, you feel, or hear, or sense, something like music. 

But intermixed with it is emotion and direction and intention. 

It's an overlay of feelings that are not yours and sounds that aren't sounds at all. 

Curiosity. 

A rising cadence. 

Gentle kindness. 

A light twinkle of notes. 

His soothing presence. 

A melody like a lullaby. 

It fades out again before you can fully capture it and leaves you confused and more than a little bit awed. 

“I felt… heard? I don't know. It was like music, but I didn't really _hear_ it so much - “ you stutter, finding it hard to explain what you just experienced. 

“Excellent,” Asgore says. “That is how it begins. You learn to listen with your soul, open yourself up to understanding on a deeper level, and the music and dance will come. This is how I began too, a long time ago, before monsters were born with the ability.”

“Can I really learn how to do thay?” you wonder, looking up at him. “I thought humans aren't magic anymore. I think I heard you say that in one of the interviews.”

“You do not need magic of your own for this. It is meant to foster understanding between my people and yours. We bring the magic, and your soul channels it,” he says. He's so full of confidence. “But I can explain more about that later. For now, I have felt your earnest desire to help, your empathy. That will have to be enough. There are tasks I must attend to, and I am sure you will want to gauge the situation for yourself as well.”

He slowly lets go of your hands and bows, a movement which you imitate the best you can, and then it's over and colour returns to the world as your soul recedes back into your chest where it belongs. 

You get swept up in a whirlwind of monsters we appear to have been watching and who now have many questions for you, but you find it hard to pay attention to them.

This was the first time you experienced real magic. 

And it was _really fucking weird_.

***

“You'll feel a lot better after we visit Napstablook, you'll see.”

“You said Napstablook is a ghost?”

“Yeah! They're one of the first monsters I met Underground. They're nice, I think you'll like them.” Frisk stops in front of one of the houses on the left, knocking on the door. It’s been painted a pale shade of blue. The rest of the house is still bare.

The street is quiet. More often than not, the monsters of Ebott still remain in their homes if they don’t have a good reason to go out. You’d asked why the day before yesterday and were saddened when Alphys explained that it was difficult to get used to how wide and open everything was on the surface - that the monsters were scared when they looked up and saw no ceiling, just the void of the sky, like a hole they could fall into. A mass case of agoraphobia induced by a thousand years of being imprisoned, entire generations growing up and dying without knowing the sky. It made you angry to think about, that the aftereffects of the monster’s banishment would likely take months or even years to fade.

The only things you can hear are the wind, your and Frisk’s breathing, and the faint hum of a small transmission tower nearby, still freshly constructed with old, but polished metal.

You’ve become so attuned to sounds and rhythms since you came here that they almost mingle in your inner ear, chasing away any thoughts you might otherwise have had about how Sans and Alphys set them up. 

Come to think of it, San definitely noticed something was up with you earlier. You glance at Frisk and wonder if he said something to them. Frisk can be perceptive, but not as much as Sans, and you noticed that Sans has a tendency to pull the strings in the background rather than doing anything directly. 

Frisk knocks again, and there’s definitely a rhythm in it now. They’re smiling a little. 

The door finally opens, revealing the ghost.

“....oh…. it’s you…. i thought it was someone else and hid… oh no…”

Napstablook looks like a ghost from a children’s book, like a floating bed sheet with a face. You don’t know why you expected them to look human, but somehow you did. You wonder how they dance without feet. Swaying? 

“I told you it would be them!” Mettaton exclaims, rolling up behind Napstablook in his boxy form. “Apologies, darlings, my cousin didn’t mean to be rude.”

“That’s okay,” Frisk tells the two of them peacefully. “We’re not offended.”

“Not at all,” you confirm, holding out your hand as you introduce yourself to Napstablook. They’re the only one you don’t know yet here. Shaking hands with them is a little awkward since they don’t really have hands in the first place, only short little nubs that grow from their pale body, but you manage. Then, you’re led into the house by Napstablook and Mettaton. It’s pretty sparse in terms of furniture, which you suppose makes sense given that only a robot and a ghost with no legs live here. 

“Did you prepare everything?” Frisk asks. 

“....yes….we can start right away…” Napstablook replies. “...are you really sure…?”

“That it will help? Yes, absolutely,” Frisk states with a confidence you wish you could feel. Unfortunately, you share Napstablook’s worry more. Frisk said that dancing with them, Napstablook and Mettaton would help you get rid of the lingering nerves that keep overtake you whenever you think of the upcoming meeting with the president. But you don’t know how. Dancing itself is still something that makes you nervous. You feel awkward doing it and the tickle of sensation you get at the very edge of your soul whenever you try unsettles you a little. You want to understand and connect with the monsters, but… you have reservations about the dancing. 

Still, you don’t say anything as you’re pulled into an encounter together with Napstablook, Frisk and Mettaton. The four of you are all in the darkness together, two colourful human souls in deep green and bright red, and two monsters in brilliant white. 

“Now, darling, I can positively feel your soul quivering! No worries, dancing is fun,” Mettaton tells you. 

“......it…. really is….” Napstablook agrees, giving you a small, but encouraging smile. 

“Yeah! Just try to imitate our styles and see if there’s something that speaks to you,” Frisk tells you. Their soul twirls and you think you can see the outline of their body behind it if you concentrate, faint red lines showing them in an en pointe position as they move, face calm. Even their voice sounds different when they speak next. “Can you see me?”

“I can,” you confirm. In response, they slow down and show you some easier moves. A step forwards, feet stiff, arms held in a half circle in front of their body. A step forwards, a step back, standing on one leg while the other moves up and down along the calf, their arms weaving elegantly through the air. 

Mettaton and Napstablook are swaying next to Frisk, too in synch for it to be random. 

Soul music. 

You try to imitate what Frisk shows you, feeling the tingle beginning to build at the very edge of your perception, at the edge of your soul. Napstablook soon joins, bringing their own interpretation along. Their movements are less stiff and you can see how Frisk’s silhouette moves differently with them, the two of them slowly matching each other. 

Trying to keep up, you allow Napstablook to twirl you, watching closely what they’re doing. It’s difficult for you though since they don’t have feet. 

Then Mettaton joins too and unlike the other two, who noticeably tried to keep their steps simple for your sake, Mettaton goes all out. He shifts from a simple, body robot resembling a toy to something more complex and resembling a human, which he immediately makes ue of. Where Napstablook has no legs or feet, Mettaton more than compensates by waving his around, swaying his hips, and grinding in a way that looks so dirty that you kind of want to hold your hand over Frisk’s eyes, even though you’re not exactly prude and neither of your hands are very visible right now. 

There’s a moment of dissonance where the three of them don’t match up and it all honestly looks ridiculous, but then something shifts. Mettaton’s movements become a little more tempered, softer, less as if he’s about to jump someone’s bones at any second. You can see some of Frisk’s twirls there and some of Napstablook's swing movements. Napstablook and Frisk in turn take on some of Mettaton’s flair, their movements becoming grander and more dazzling. 

And most importantly, you hear a beat. 

Or you feel a beat. 

Or you sense it, or however this works. 

It’s in your soul and encompasses everything you are, drowning out all the thoughts and worries that were clogging up your mind before. You only experience the beat, you see how the movements of Napstablook and Mettaton and Frisk match it, and there’s nothing left in you but the desire to join them. 

So you do. 

A twist here, a step there, a little twirl. Clumsy, inexperienced and searching, instead of moving with the grace and poise of the others who clearly have more experience than you. But you’re moving, you’re dancing, you’re sensing that beat and you feel emotion resonate within it. 

You feel everybody’s joy and hope, pulses of happiness, and waiting - for you. Their rising happiness when they notice your cautious dance steps. Their amusement at the mess they’re creating with so many different styles together. A breathless laughter escapes you as you sink more and more into the experience, surrounded by different feelings. You notice a movement from Frisk that’s different from any of the styles you’ve seen in here so far, something wilder and more outside of any classified style you’ve been shown. 

You imitate it, and the beat becomes stronger. 

Your body feels light, the steps feel easy because you don’t have to follow any rules anymore. It’s all doing and being, existing in the moment and following whatever comes into your mind. It’s silly and childish and wonderful. 

Free and happy. 

Then the moment passes and you become aware of the mess again, noticing once more how chaotic all of this is, with how much Mettaton and Napstablook and Frisk have to hold their own laughter back. It’s silly. Too silly. The beat slows and peters out, and the darkness of the encounter recedes. 

“What was _that_?” you ask, still a little breathless from all the movement and the laughter. 

“Are you still worried?” Frisk asks you. 

You blink in surprise at them, wanting to say that yes, you are, the president is coming to visit and you’ll have to help make a case for the monsters and the responsibility is enormous - but curiously, you don’t actually feel like that anymore. It’s hard to stay worried about these things when you have to make your case about magical dancing monsters. Not that it’s not important, but it’s also definitely a little ridiculous. 

Frisk only smiles at you, apparently knowing exactly what’s up. 

“Fine,” you grumble, although there’s no true anger in it. You’re actually grinning. “I see your point.”

***

“Okay, let’s get this going, you wimps!!”

“UNDYNE, BE NICE!” 

“What, they haven’t even found their style yet! How long have they been here now?” 

“ALMOST A MONTH.”

“Yeah!!!! And still nothing!” 

“UNDYNE!!” 

“Now she’s done it,” Dolores whispers to you with a fascinated expression, and you can’t help but agree. You’ve never heard Papyrus sound so scandalised and appalled, especially not with Undyne. He normally tended to roll with whatever she said, trying to agree with her as much as possible even when he really didn’t. 

“Ugh, I know. Everyone at their own pace,” Undyne mumbles, actually looking chastised now. “It’s just, they’re human! Their souls are crazy strong, so you’d think they’d have crazy good dance moves too!” 

“YES! BUT! IT'S HARDLY THE TIME FOR THAT WHEN THEY JUST ESCAPED SUCH A HARROWING SITUATION!” Papyrus insists. 

“Ngaaaah! Okay okay! I'm sorry!!” Undyne looks almost desperate to talk about literally anything else at this point. 

“It's okay,” you tell her, taking pity on her. “Maybe we should just start?”

“Y-yeah! Let's go!” Undyne shoots you a grateful look and you give her a smile in return. 

You do kind of agree with Papyrus - the mall incident happened only a couple of days ago and you can't pretend that you're not still shaken by what happened. Neither can Dolores, really. Both of you tried your best to deal with the terrorist attack, but the shock and trauma will likely linger for a bit, even with help from a good therapist. 

On the other hand though, you know that Undyne simply isn't the best at expressing her support in a gentle way. She doesn't mean to be harsh, it's just that her personality tends to be a little on the rough side. Instead of offering you words of support, she suggested training you and Dolores, showing you how you can use the monster brand of dancing in encounters to fight. So you can protect yourself better should anything like this ever happen again. That's why you're out here on the training patch with her and Papyrus, which the Canine Squad is keeping clear of spectators for your and Dolores’ sake. Only Sans and Alphys have come to watch, hoping to gain new insights into how humans handle the mixture of dancing and fighting that the monsters practice. And even that was something Undyne had been skeptical about. She made it a condition that if you or Dolores don't feel comfortable with them here, they'll have to leave. Getting the training itself done properly takes precedence. It's Undyne’s way of showing that she cares, and you appreciate that even if you hope that you'll never have to encounter another terrorist ever again. 

You know that's very wishful thinking though. 

So you brace yourself as Undyne initiates the encounter. Once more the world appears far to you as your and Dolores’ souls draw all attention to themselves, leaving your surroundings dark and unnoticeable while Undyne and Papyrus glow in white. 

They're both already swaying to the music of their own souls, which you can hear yet. 

“Okay, listen up!” Undyne barks, drawing all attention to her. “With monsters and encounters, intent is everything! We normally don't want to fight when we're in encounters, but when we do, the intent changes how our souls react! Every movement can then form into into a magical attack that we can use to defend ourselves in addition to any movements we might make with our bodies. You're not mages so you likely won't be able to do that - but you can use the laser Alphys has put into your phones for a similar effect as we recently found out. We're going to start by training you how to use your dance in a more aggressive and defensive way, and then we'll add the lasers and our bullets to train you in that as well, alright? If you can artificially start encounters with other humans even though you're human yourself, those terrorists won't even know what hit them! Then you can win for sure!!”

“Makes sense,” you nod. You're personally certainly glad that you already had ample experience with encounters before the mall incident. You think that if the encounter with the terrorists had been your first, it probably would have horrified and shocked you too. You don't know how you would have reacted to the darkness and to having your soul outside your body. 

“Alright, first things first. Limber up a little! You already know dancing needs nimble feet, but if you wanna fight you _really_ need to be quick with your movements!” Undyne tells you. “You need a loose stance, knees bent, keep your feet ready to move at a second's notice!”

You and Dolores both to your best to imitate the stance Undyne shows you. You notice that Papyrus has shifted somewhat too; the stiffer starting position of his Latin style taking on some of that looseness Undyne speaks of. You personally feel strange getting into a position for dancing where you know you'll be expected to fight. It doesn't feel right to you. Dolores, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have an issue with it. 

“Yeah! Just like that! Now watch this!” 

It's in many ways a relatively simple movement, nothing more than a lift of one leg high enough that it could hit your head it it came close enough, coupled with a twist of Undyne’s body to give the arch of her leg a degree of rotation. 

It still looks completely foreign to you. 

Undyne demonstrates it again, pairs up with Papyrus who evades it in a dramatic sidestep with a lot of flow to his hips, and you can definitely see how it works and how it's intended to be used to fight. 

But when you try to get even just the basic movement before the lifting of the leg right, you can feel your failure immediately. You can do it, but your body feels unnatural and inflexible with it. This isn't you.

“Yes! Yes like that!” Undyne shouts. 

Since she couldn't possibly have meant you, you look to the side. 

And Dolores - 

Dolores _gets_ it. 

Not the exact movement, no, not the exact style that Undyne is using. But there's a spark in Dolores’ narrow eyes, a sense of revelation that coupling dancing with something more pragmatic seems to bring her. Dolores is dancing but she's also moving in a way that's indicative of building strength, of preparing for a fight, of working out for the sake of building muscle and in that she finds a rhythm that you can tell comes entirely from within herself. 

From her soul.

Dolores’ soul brightens and resonates and you can feel and hear a beat, transforming into a melody as Undyne joins her and the two of them begin to dance with each other, both laughing and whooping as the pace picks up. 

You haven't been in an encounter before where a true understanding between the participants was reached and you only get a partial view of it now, since that understanding doesn't include you and Papyrus. But you still get a lot more of it than you ever did before. 

You get to see friendship translated into music and motion, how with each perfectly matched step of their choreography, their expressions change into one of understanding. You get to see Dolores finding her style, the one that's just right for her. You think you even recognise it - zumba, or a variation of it in any case while she's also incorporating some of Undyne’s capoeira moves. 

It seems fitting for her, and you're happy that she found her style. Even if it leaves you standing on the side for a bit - 

“HUMAN! WOULD YOU LIKE TO DANCE WITH ME WHILE THESE TWO HAVE THEIR MOMENT OF FRIENDSHIP?” Papyrus asks you suddenly. 

When you meet his look you could swear he noticed that you feel a little lost. He may not be as good at reading faces as his brother is, but he's not completely oblivious. 

“Sounds good.”

Despite the fact that you don't have a style to use and Papyrus and you thus can't form quite the same connection Dolores and Undyne are currently forming, dancing with him is still a lot of fun. It doesn't take up your attention completely though and so you're left noticing something that didn't stand out to you before. Alphys and Sans have joined the encounter, staying in the background while noting things down. Alphys is most looking at Dolores and Undyne, only sometimes glancing at what you and Papyrus are doing.

Sans though?

You can't help but notice that Sans is staring solely at you.

***

The night is relatively clear.

Spring is slowly giving way to summer, the temperatures milder and rainy days getting rarer. 

Perfect weather for stargazing. 

You were a little surprised when Sans asked you if you wanted to come. He's always been nice to you and sometimes he cheered you up when he noticed you were down, but you know that stargazing is important to him and the two of you aren't that close. You would have expected him to ask his brother or Frisk or Toriel before he asked you. 

Not that you mind. 

It embarrasses you, but you noticed recently that your eyes sometimes stray to Sans and linger there, taking in his easygoing attitude and the faint, shell-like shimmer on his bones. He's friendly and funny and clever and has a nice voice. And the fact that he's a skeleton somehow doesn't make a difference for you. Usually you would do something about it, but in this case you're not so sure. You don't know him that well and he's a monster. His tastes might be completely outside of what you can give him. 

“So, are we going to use that telescope?” you wonder after you and Sans have arrived on the platform and looked at the sky for a while.

“uh… yeah, i actually came here for something other than that,” he admits, still not looking anywhere but up. “i noticed something. about your dance style. ‘n at first i thought you'd figure it out but then you didn't. now, i know about about the topic, so… “

“What, you want to help me?!” 

He looks awkward at your obvious surprise, but you really couldn't have kept it out of your voice if you tried. 

Sans doesn't dance. 

Based on comments that Papyrus and Frisk made you think he might dance with them occasionally. He might have done it once or twice with Toriel, if you really read between the lines. But even all of that is only based on implication. You've never seen him dance and never heard him talk about it, nor did you hear anyone describe his style. It's hard to determine how he might feel about dancing, so you figured that maybe he's just… ambiguous. That maybe he hasn't figured it out yet, in spite of the fact that he's a monster. Maybe he also feels frustrated about his lack of style and inability to connect with others through movement and his soul. 

Like you. 

And now he casually positions himself in the role of a teacher, something you've only ever seen monsters do who are very experienced and advanced in their personal style. Invitations for dancing together are spoken by pretty much anyone, but teaching? That's an offer only few make, and only when they're confident they can back up the offer. 

“yeah, i know. i’m not the most open about my dancing. ‘m working on it.” 

At some point during this conversation, he pulled his hood up over his skull. For some reason that makes him seem more serious about all of this, but you still feel a little blindsided from his offer. You have trouble imagining someone like Sans, whose contributions to casual conversations consist mostly of jokes, as a serious dance teacher. He isn't pulling your leg, is he?

“i mean, you don't… if you don't wanna, then of course we don't have to do this -” his speech becomes a mumble, more quiet than even his natural voice, and a faint blue glow begins to illuminate the shadowed inside of his hoodie, the colour mostly emanating from his cheekbones and neck. 

It's a blush, you realise belatedly. 

You haven't ever seen Sans blush before, in all the months you've been here. 

“No! I mean yes! I mean… I would like that,” you stutter out. The sight of his brightly lit skull leaves you a little flustered as well. “I was just really surprised. I wasn't even sure if you dance at all.”

“i don't like to dance with just anyone. or where anyone can watch,” he mumbles. 

He's _shy_ about it. 

Of all the things you ever imagined Sans to be, shy was so far down the list it hadn't even entered your conscious awareness. He always seems so relaxed and as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. Hell, this is the guy who introduced himself to you with a whoopie cushion! Since when does he care about what other people think of him? 

And yet, he's offering to dance with you. To help you. 

“I think I get that,” you tell him. “I went to that birthday party with Harvey and Tom and it was fun and all, but I still felt awkward dancing in front of so many people…”

So many people who were _better_ at it than you, but that's something you don't say out loud. If he's offering to teach you, he must be good enough that this doesn't apply to him anyway. 

You suddenly begin to feel apprehensive. 

So far you never really minded when Sans came to watch because you assumed he didn't dance, or that if he did he was like you. But if he's good enough to offer to teach you… 

“yeah. anyway. ready?”

It seems he doesn't want to waste any more time feeling awkward. 

“Let's do this,” you say in spite of your own worry. You don't want to make him think you don't want his help after all, and you have to admit you're curious about his style and proficiency now. 

He takes a step towards you, another, a deliberate walk that has a rhythm and purpose and it's with that walk that the encounter begins. You almost don't notice at first, transfixed as you are on him approaching you. It's only when you see the stars vanish, one form of darkness overtaking another, and your soul emerges that you know. The walk is part of his style. He is already dancing. 

A sharp movement to the side when he reaches you, a sidestep, and then he's standing behind you, back to back. You feel his spine and ribs press against you through both of your clothes, swaying and stopping, a mix between slow and fast movements. It's an invitation for you to join him, to move together with him, but it hour having to look at him as he talks to you. So you do. Wondering what he'll have to say to take such measures. 

A beat starts building when you begin moving with him, faint still but present. 

“you know my style?” He lifts his voice at the end of the sentence, but also says it with so much conviction that it's clear that this is a statement rather than a question. 

“Hip hop,” you tell him immediately. 

“you looked up different styles,” he guesses as the two of you grind against each other, back to back. His body heat is seeping through his clothes. The beat is building. “what they look like and what they're called.”

“I did,” you admit. You wonder where he's going with this - 

“then you already know yours.”

The statement startles you so much that you stop moving. The beat that was accompanying the slow movements of you and him together breaks and falls away. Yet you're still in the encounter. You don't see Sans in front of you and you can't hear anything from outside either while the encounter continues. 

You stand in silence, in the dark. 

It scares you somehow, even though you know you're safe. Even though you still see your bottle green soul shining in front of you. Only the warmth of Sans’ body, his hands reaching for yours, remind you that you're not lost in this quiet darkness. 

“I… I don't…”

Your voice falls away. 

“you do.” Sans sounds gentle, his voice completely serious in a way that you've rarely ever heard from him. “you know. you already found it, but you can't admit it to yourself. why?”

“I don't know,” you say. You don't even know if you're disagreeing with him or answering his question. 

His hands squeeze yours, keeping you firmly grounded in the present. No room left for confusion. 

“take a step to the left,” he says. You can feel him move behind you, slowly, allowing you to sense his movement and follow. You take the step with him, not resisting his guidance. 

“lower,” he instructs. You think that it if he were to actually dance in his style, he'd take a jump into a squat, but he's teaching you and so instead the movement stays slow and easily replicable. 

The beat that got lost slowly picks up again, low enough that you can barely sense it at the very edges of your soul. 

“up.” 

He's so easy to follow. He's _making_ it easy for you of course, but there's something more to it. You like him. You want to dance with him. Want to move in tandem and forge a connection between you like you've seen others do. You want that. 

“turn.” 

You stumble a bit on that part, the turn half a twirl like you've seen Frisk do. It's not as smooth a movement as it could be. It isn't always on Frisk either. There's jumps and oddities in their style, something other than the pure grace and precision of ballet sliding in here and there. Probably because they're a child, and still learning. You manage to catch yourself before the stumble causes you to fall and so does Sans. 

His hands are on your lower arms and instead of pausing he uses the situation to keep going, pulling you close in the rhythm of the beat the two of you have slowly been building up again. 

Seeing him move properly now that you're facing each other causes the heat to rise in your face. He's smooth, the hoodie and sport pants and sneakers he constantly wears allowing him to move without hindrance. His usually lazy appearance didn't prepare you for just how good he'd be at this, how fast and fluent and practised his movements are. Sharp and fast or slow and gentle, cool and sensual at the same time. An unexpected touch of something serious and genuine. 

It's so different from the image he usually cultivates of himself, so far divorced from the lazy, weird little dumpy dude who guzzles ketchup for fun and tells bad jokes all the time. 

So different from who you thought he would be. 

And that... 

...you understand. 

“It's because it's different,” you whisper in confession, not missing a beat as you follow his steps. “It doesn't feel like me.” 

“show me.”

You want to protest. It’s something you haven’t let out much, maybe a little when you first discovered it while dancing with Frisk and Napstablook and Mettaton, maybe a little when you went to that party with Harvey and Tom, maybe in little flashes you barely remember in other encounters between that. But you never let it go on. It’s hard for you to even figure out whether that suppression was conscious or subconscious, something you wanted actively or something your mind just did based on your internalised worries. 

It seems like it would be so much easier to insist you can’t do it. 

Pull back and say you’re not ready, thank him for trying, and figure this out by yourself without having the one person you have a mild crush on watching. 

That wouldn’t be fair though. Sans did this for you. In spite of the fact that he had his own shyness to overcome, his own set of worries and fears to battle with, hidden so deep down that you wouldn’t have guessed at them. He pushed past his own inhibitions, revealed his fears and flaws to you together with his style, all in an effort to help you, because he saw himself in you, saw what holds him back repeated in you. 

You couldn’t possibly say no to him right now. 

A deep breath, a mental sort of bracing for everything you fear might go wrong, and then you reach deep down into yourself, into your soul, and you try to let go and dance. 

And you dance. 

You let your soul take control, the magic inherent in the encounter channeled through it and allowing you to connect with yourself in a way you can’t normally. Your soul knows what it wants to do, how your body should move. The practise isn’t there, you’re not able to execute all the movements perfectly - but the idea, the choreography, that’s all inherent as soon as you allow it to express itself. 

A fast jump with your arms and legs spread out, as if you’re presenting yourself to Sans. 

Challenging him to watch you. 

A quick sequence of forward steps that recalls the beginning of his dance, only much more dramatic and with more finger snapping. Not to mock him, but just because it’s more fun that way. A fold over, holding yourself, a little shimmy that you’ve seen other monsters do, like Moldsmal. 

They keep coming and coming. 

A few steps with the pointed toes and gracefully arching arms of Frisk’s ballet, the little hops of Napstablook’s swing, the curve of a leg up high and down low like you’ve seen Undyne do, shaking your hips like Papyrus and doing the quick steps and arm gestures of one of Alphys’ anime choreographies, some long and slow steps from Toriel and Asgore’s waltz. The silly faces Tom makes in his interpretative dance. The footwork of Harvey’s jive. And so many more. 

Every person you’ve danced with makes an appearance in your own style, their influence resonating and then falling away as you finally allow yourself to express your own style, as silly and over the top as it might be. 

And it is. 

You dance as if you have nothing to lose, like a child would; completely focused on the feeling and the joy of it, with no regards to appearance or impression or technique. Free and happy. 

All the while, the beat that was building while you danced along with Sans changes and speeds up. It becomes something entirely of its own, transforms into a melody that resonates with the core of your being. 

Sans. 

That last thought reminded you of him again and as soon as you think about him the song pouring out of your soul changes. Suddenly, you’re looking at him with every move. Does he approve? Does he like it? Is he proud of you for doing this, or does he think it’s silly? Will he laugh at you? 

No. Of course he isn’t laughing. 

He’s smiling, but not in a mocking way. He looks happy. He looks like he likes what he sees. 

A fresh wave of confidence overcomes you. He likes it. He showed you his dance, so now you’re showing him yours. You’re doing this for him - 

_’cause I like you_

-because the idea of him approving, of him liking how you move, is making your skin prickle with excitement. 

Sans doesn’t stand there watching you for long now that you’re clearly focusing on him. It takes him less than a second to find the right opening between the new beat and your exuberant dance moves and then he jumps right in. Unlike before, he doesn’t hold back or slow down to dance with you. He lets it all out like you do, his movements confident and precise, no matter how slow or fast they are. With every quick bit of footwork he doesn’t stumble, with every slow movement his balance is perfect. It only makes him even more attractive, if you’re being honest - 

_Yeah, I want you_

_Oh, my my my_

Wait. 

Wait, that’s… 

That’s not just your thoughts. That last bit. That _wasn’t you_.

“easy,” Sans mumbles, catching up to you and grasping your hands before you can fall out of the rhythm out of shock. “let it happen. it’s okay.”

“I… oh god. Look, I - uh…” you stutter, feeling your face heat up like it never did before. 

Stupid soul music. 

You heard that it changes depending on how the connection with the other party is made, but you never experienced it before now. You didn’t know there would be words involved. You didn’t know you’d end up accidentally telling him - 

_Is it cool that I said all that?_  
_Is it chill that you're in my head?_  
_'Cause I know that it's delicate_

_Don't make me wait another day_  
_'Cause passion is passion_

You can’t help but stare at him. You can sense that, hear that. The music from his soul mixing with that from yours. And they match, melodies winding around each other easily. Not perfectly, but they match for sure. They don’t sound dissonant like they would if the connection wasn’t working out, like they would if your thoughts and his were too different. 

The two of you are still moving together, synching up. 

_Sometimes I wonder when you sleep_  
_Are you ever dreaming of me?_  
_Sometimes when I look into your eyes_  
_I pretend you're mine, all the damn time_  
_'Cause I like you_

__

_Now, let's stop running from love_  
_Running from love_  
_Let's stop, baby_

The two of you stop. Just like your souls demand it. 

He’s right in front of you, and close, close enough that you can observe the smooth, shimmery surface of his skull in perfect detail, the soft lights that function as eyes in his large, dark sockets. 

There’s so little space between you that you can taste his breath, chalky and with a hint of ketchup. No surprise there. It wouldn’t take any effort at all to lean forwards and close the distance. 

When you do, you and Sans move in perfect synchronicity.


End file.
